Second time is a charm.

As I shut down yesterday, I was determined to expand on the diminution of the Horatio Alger characteristic, that is embedded in America's cultural mosaic, but not now. Why? Because it dawned on me this morning how underutilized a grandparent's experience is. The connection between Alger and grandparents is a reach, but not for me.

And this subject is more important than Horatio Alger, who, as I understand it, was more a writer anyway than a rags to riches entrepreneur. I will explain, the grandparent observation, but first, I must set the foundation. I must also in the spirit of full disclosure  confess that as a grandparent my opinion is unequivocally conflicted.

The great quarterbacks have other great quarterbacks for mentoring. PGA professionals include a teaching professional in their entourage to the next tournament. Teachers have other teachers who observe and provide feedback. These are all important parts of our lives.

However, the most important part of our future rests with our children, who for the most part are in hands of first time parents. If you have several children, by my estimation, you are still a first time parent. By the time a genuine parenting skill has been developed, mostly through the school of hard knocks and time consuming regrets, prefaced with a "If I had only...," the children are grown and out of the house. And as the cycle continues, parents, typically through no fault of their own, now become grandparents. In the good old days, multiple generations of families lived together, and when the first time parents had children, the second time parents, the grandparents, raised the children while the first time parents worked the farm.

I believe this practice, perhaps manifested out of economic necessity, was a smart and effective method. Why? Because grandparents are less concerned about the small idiosyncrasies of children. They know that over time these small annoyances do not matter. Hence, they spend less time correcting a child's minor infractions and more time focused on the major aspects of a child's persona. The parents, in turn, can spend more time enjoying the magical things their children do, more time encouraging them to be genuinely conscientious people, more time telling them they love them, and less time trying to make them perfect.

Perfection is the scourge of the parent and the child. Have a parenting problem, ask a grandparent. Another point of view in sports and life is valuable. The grandparent is the person sitting on the couch petting their dog.