It Takes Nature and Nurture

A third-grade boy comes home and hands his father his report card. His father looks at it and says, “How do you explain these D’s and F’s? The boy looks up at him and says, “You tell me: Is it nature or nurture?” I was once at a lively, noisy science fair with my own third-grade son, and we were touring some of his classmates efforts. Several experiments involved seeds, soil, and growth curves. One memorable little girl took great pains to explain to us that her seeds had started with identical DNA. She had planted one in a nutrient-rich soil and watered it carefully. She had planted the other in a nutrient-poor soil and watered it carefully, too. Time passed. The seed nurtured with terrific soil made a terrific plant, which she proudly let me hold in my hands. The seed nurtured in poor soil made a pitiful, withered plant. She let me hold that, too. Her point was that the seed material provided identical growth opportunities for both plants, but that starting equal was not enough.“You need both seed and soil”, she explained to me—nature and nurture—to get the desired results.

Raising children is like raising a plant, it takes a seed (nature) and soil (nurture).