Daily Lesson from Life 16 January 2009

"Fri, Jan 16, 2009 China Daily/Asia News Network

Parents blame school for son's alcohol-fueled death

CHINA - The parents of a college student who died of alcohol poisoning got 60,000 yuan (S$13,146) in compensation from the school located in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province.


The boy, surnamed Wang, drank too much liquor with his friends on New Year's Day, which led to his death.

The parents felt the boy developed bad habits in school during his two years of study.

"There must be problems with the school's management and education," they said. They demanded more than a million yuan. After mediation, the parents finally agreed to accept 60,000 yuan."

A sad story to comment and reflect on.

Lessons for me are:

1. parents are like leaders to their kids. They can envision, enable to a certain extent, and empower but cannot do the rest of the 7e of execute/energize in close distance/evolve based on ETHICS as the kids are away from them on their own. So, unless the leaders help to the kids to develop their own vision, identified their own ASK for TOP D enabling needs and work on them themselves, and grounded them on ETHICS of doing the right things, the kids may not fall into bad behaviors when they are alone!;

2. it is critical to strengthen the ETHICS of doing the right things for the kids. While the parents can teach or even nag at the kids, when they are away physically, they will only do or continue to do the right things if they are COMMITTED to the visions they had developed themselves or with the parents grounded on ETHICS. To be committed they have to believe in the vision as commitment is defined as: Doing the right things when NO ONE is watching! That 2-way and open communication has to take place so that the kids are committed instead of just being COMPLIANCE! (i.e. Compliance = Doing the right things when SOMEONE is watching!);

3. as the kids move from dependent stage as an infant to independent stage as a student (college or university) away from home, it is imperative that they develop the proper Enable mindset and practices. ASK for TOP D is important to perform well at school or at work. The D (for Discipline) is paramount. It will be hard to resist peers pressure to pick up some BAD behaviors like smoking and drinking. With Discipline and with a clear vision and commitment to that vision, the kids have a better chance of resisting or avoiding. Of course, knowing when to extract oneself from bad company is an effective tactic or action to take. It is hard to do as who does not want to be 'one of the boys' in a new environment?!

May this tragedy provide a case for others after him to reflect and take charge of how one can prevent such tragedy from happening to their kids!