You Don't Have to Be the One Who Teaches Everything
Some of the best conversations I have on this show aren't with experts. They're with parents who've simply lived it — who are a few years further down the road than you are right now, willing to look back honestly at what worked and what didn't. That's exactly what this episode is. Dericka Oddoye is an engineer, a friend, one of the most creative people I know, and a mom of three boys — Ethan, Gavin, and Landon — who I've had the privilege of working with for years at my learning center. Ethan just graduated high school and is heading to Syracuse. Gavin is starting high school. Landon is starting fifth grade at a brand-new school. I wanted her on this show because raising three kids under one roof, and getting each of them to where they are today, taught her things I think every parent needs to hear.
It's Okay to Ask for Help
I asked Dericka how she's changed as a mom since Ethan, her oldest, was little. Her answer surprised me with how simple it was: she learned it's okay to outsource help. “You try to do everything,” she told me. “Moms, we try to have our capes on, and we're gonna solve all the problems our kids have, we're gonna be the nurse, we're gonna be the chef, we're gonna be everything that they need. And sometimes we just don't have that kind of capacity.” Realizing that didn't make her a lesser parent — it meant giving someone else's perspective room to reach her child in a way she couldn't.
That lesson traces back to when Ethan was in first or second grade, right when Common Core rolled out. Dericka is an engineer — she'd taken every math there is under the sun — and still her son came home from school saying, mom, you taught me the wrong way. So she set up meetings with his teachers to tutor herself on how they wanted him to solve problems, just so they could be on the same page. Her frustration got loud enough that her family ended up interviewed on the local news about the Common Core rollout. “That's probably what ignited the, hey, it's okay to get help no matter how smart you are, how many degrees you have,” she said. “And in that, it also instills in them that it's okay to get help outside of mom and dad.”
3 Boys, 3 Completely Different Kids
I asked Dericka to walk me through each of her sons, and what struck me was how differently she has to parent all three, even though they grew up in the same house.
Ethan's nickname is Showtime. He wants to be wherever the action is, he's never shy, and academic strength matters to him because he cares what people think of him. He's always liked to shop, so Dericka rewards good grades with money — the more he earns, the more he can spend. “That's worked up to now,” she laughed. “Even as a senior, I'm just waiting for him to tally up how much he's going to say we owe him.”
Gavin is The Professor — laid-back, calm, self-motivated, and academically strong without much visible effort. “Things come really easy to him,” Dericka said. “I wonder if he even studies now for exams.” He's the one she has to pull out socially more than academically — he'll fade into the background if she lets him.
Landon, the youngest, started as The Gentleman before other people started calling him The Professor Number Two, then The Supervisor, and now, at school, Mr. President. He questions authority, he wants to know the return on his investment before he'll put in effort, and he's not motivated by money the way Ethan is. “What motivates Landon is a glimpse of what the output would be,” Dericka explained. “Why do I have to learn this, and how does it benefit me?” It's a hard question to answer for a ten-year-old, but it's the one he needs answered before he'll invest.
“Each of them have taught me something different,” Dericka said, “and all of them require something different, parenting wise.” That's a line worth sitting with if you have more than one child and keep expecting the same approach to work on all of them.
The Season She Almost Wanted to Quit
I asked Dericka if there was ever a season where she wanted to quit — not on being a mom, but on all the extra effort. Her answer was honest: with three boys in different sports and activities, usually two seasons a year each, some weeks she'd look around at other parents doing less and wonder if it was really worth the money and the time she could be spending on herself. “I'd love to go to Pilates in the evening, but no, I'm at soccer practice.”
But she also told me what happens in the lulls, when her kids aren't doing anything structured: she doesn't like how they spend that time either, and she misses the version of them that's engaged and busy. Now, watching Ethan finish high school, she can see the return. “That's return on investment, where you kind of see, in comparison to other kids who were not involved in extracurriculars and were just coming home from school — they don't watch TV anymore, they get behind computers and YouTube. You think about what if I were to reclaim my time, but the return that we now see on the time we've invested in the kids.”
Everything Is Training
The idea that tied our whole conversation together was one word: training. “You train them so that not only they do, but you can do the things that you enjoy doing,” Dericka told me. When her kids were three months old, she got them passports, because she and her husband wanted to keep traveling. Ethan took his first long flight to London at eighteen months. Potty training, in her mind, is the same principle — you train them because you don't want to do diapers forever. Sports are the same — her kids have trainers for lacrosse, soccer, golf, on top of practice.
“In relation to that,” she said, “I felt like Kumon was training for the kids, just as important.” She enrolled Ethan around second grade, checking his packets every day. When Gavin saw his big brother going, he begged to join too — he didn't want the at-home worksheets, he wanted to “come in the center” like Ethan did. Then Landon saw Gavin and asked, what about me? “It just became part of the routine, part of the family tradition,” Dericka said. “There's no way you could lose when you're fueling them with extra time where they could just be letting their brain cells die. We're going to keep them activated.”
What She'd Tell Herself Back Then
I asked Dericka what she'd say to herself back in second grade, right when she first enrolled Ethan and was still figuring all of this out. “That is all worth it,” she said. “Anything you pour into your kids is going to be an immeasurable result that comes after.” And to the mom in the middle of it right now, who can't picture her toddler ever becoming an eighteen-year-old heading off to college, her message was simple: it does get easier. “The earlier you get yourself in the mode of investing in your kids' education outside of school, the better the whole household will be.”
As Dericka and I wrapped up, she reminded me it does take a village to raise a child — and that the work doesn't end when a child ages out of a program. She still keeps up with Ethan, Gavin, and Landon, just like I do with every student who's come through my center. If you're in the thick of it right now, wondering whether you're doing too much or not enough, I hope Dericka's story reminds you of something worth holding onto: your child does not need a perfect parent. They just need a present one.
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