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Butterflies and Helicopters

July 9, 2014

I’m doing as much as I know how to attract butterflies to my garden. For example, I’ve planted a butterfly bush and milkweed plants. I do this because these plants are supposed to attract butterflies and bees, and I know butterflies and bees are essential to producing vegetables.

One of the greatest miracles any person can observe is to watch a butterfly emerge from a cocoon. It was as wondrous to me last summer as the first time I saw it occur when I was a young child, when I first saw a butterfly emerge with damp, shriveled wings. 

I was told then that we shouldn’t interfere, that we shouldn’t help the butterfly escape the cocoon and shouldn’t help spread the wings. We had to let the butterfly struggle. We were instructed that the struggle would give strength to the wings, and that would be essential to the butterfly’s survival.

Childhood is much like this, but too often helicopter parents intervene and interfere with the growth process and, ultimately, weaken their children’s ability to fend for themselves, to overcome adversity and to take flight.

Helicopter parents endanger our butterfly children.

Attendance Trends

March 27, 2015

Media across the US have been reporting the decline in attendance at intercollegiate football and basketball games. “It’s a national epidemic,” according to a Charleston (SC) Post & Courier column this month.

This should surprise no one. And it’s the latest proof that it is possible to get too much of a good thing. And when it comes to college football and basketball games, there is far too much indeed –

  • A few too many football games during the regular season, far too many of those games televised, and an absurd number of postseason bowl games of zero significance.


  • About two times too many basketball games during the regular season, far too many televised, and too often with absurd starting times and post-midnight conclusions.

The over-exposure of the college product began to suck the life out of high school football and basketball attendance two decades ago. And as the higher profile college programs have done more and more to promote their events, lower profile college programs have paid the price. Higher profile programs are now gnawing on each other’s bones.

All of this makes life tougher for us at the interscholastic level; but at the MHSAA, we’re not merely whining – we’re working to increase the attendance and enhance the spectators’ experience. A staff task force has been generating ideas, and the Representative Council has been generous with encouragement and support to implement changes in the MHSAA tournament atmosphere.

Perhaps we can pick up a few of those fans who have defected from the high price of college tickets and the slow pace of their televised games.