The power of ‘to’ when it comes to parenting, mentoring

My heart goes out to parents who have children in the home right now. These last two years have been brutal on us all, and day by day, we are growing in the larger realization of how fear – fear of Covid, fear of unintentionally spreading Covid, fear of losing jobs and incomes, fear of life never returning to “normal” – is really having a profound impact on our kids.

So many things have become uncertain in the world around us that fear is a very understandable response. But as a parent (and for me as a grandparent), it’s easy to make fear-based decisions while failing to recognize the enormous possibilities that exist around us even now.

I remember, when my kids were small, I wasn’t sure what it meant to be a good parent. All I knew was that I didn’t want to raise my kids the way I was raised. But, because I really didn’t have something to parent them “to” or “toward,” fear initially led me to parent “against” the outcomes I didn’t want for them.

However, I was so fortunate to have people around me who were doing something different. They were parenting “to:” seeing the gifts and abilities in their kids and cultivating and affirming those things in such a positive way that it made their children resilient and confident as they grew.

Helping their kids see their irreplaceable value, their limitless potential, the possible contributions they could make to the world and thereby giving them a picture of a bright and meaningful future was a very compelling parenting style that I learned from and put into practice. Rather than parenting “against,” I learned to parent “to.”

What I saw in their kids, and later in mine, was an ability to persevere when hard times came: disappointments, trials, whatever. The kids were so motivated by what they were growing “to” that they just kept moving past whatever obstacle showed up to achieve the futures they genuinely believed lay ahead for them.

It’s that kind of belief and positivity that has also been the driving force behind the work of The Bridge of Southern New Mexico, and why it’s been such an honor to be a part of this great organization. We profoundly believe that the people of this community are its greatest assets, and our work is rooted in putting the student, young person or whomever in the center of the room and asking, “What do they need to succeed?”

As this amazing group of community leaders has brought their collective influence and resources to the table to answer that question, we’ve successfully collected the dots, connected the dots and built the relationships and supports that ensure our youth and families sit squarely in the center of an “ecosystem of opportunity.” This ecosystem has constructed pathways like nowhere else in our state that can propel our community members from where they are to where they want to be.

Our work progressed undeterred during Covid. While timing and priorities changed, the elements of the ecosystem did not. They got better, more defined, more urgent and basically prepared us for the time we would embrace a post-shutdown future.

Now, as our students are still assimilating to our new “normal,” our belief in them and their limitless future is unchanged. It is in when we press on in collaboration and innovation that our community, especially its young people, will gain all of the benefits of this ecosystem that exists for them, not us. It’s our job to work hand-in-hand and remove anything that gets in the way of them achieving their full academic and economic potential.

As a community that is fearlessly moving “to,” the answers will always lie in our ability to move “To-”gether.

Tracey Bryan is president/CEO of The Bridge of Southern New Mexico. She can be reached at TraceyBryan@thebridgeofsnm.org.