A few months ago, my husband was graciously invited to attend a NASCAR race. Since I’d never attended one I wanted to know all about it. Where did he sit? Was it loud? Was if fun or boring? Did anyone get hurt? Did he think I would like to go? He had a ton of fun and found the whole process very interesting. One of the things he talked a lot about was the pace car. The only thing that I knew about a pace car was that they were really “cool.”

Years ago when I was a tween, my oldest brother had a pace car. It was a beautiful gray and blue Camaro with “Indy 500″ tattooed on its sides. I remember everybody pointing at that car and commenting on how amazing it was no matter where my brother drove it. I could not figure out the love affair, but admittedly I loved sports cars for years for this reason. 

As my husband continued describing his experience, I quickly realized how little I knew about the role a pace car fulfills. I knew nothing about the sport of racing (and still know very little). However, what I heard about the pace car quickly made me think about our job as parents, educators and care providers. As explained to me the role of a pace car fulfills four things:

1. Sets the tone of the race.

2. Leads the drivers to help them become familiar with the track.

3. Limits the speed of competing cars when there may be danger such as obstruction on the track.

4. When done with the above, gets off the track and allows the competitors to finish the race.

In general the pace car is very much like parenting: We create an environment for our children to live and develop in, helping them to learn the world as we see it . We try to protect them from the dangers that our world holds whether they be installing safety mechanisms on our stairs in our homes for our newly crawling babies or helping our teenagers navigate peer pressure. And hopefully after we have nurtured, loved, and taught our children we will get out of their way to allow them to be adults.

This is very much the role I hope parents will take in raising compassionate and open-minded children (I call this being “mindhearted”). Essentially, it is our job to set the tone for examining the values our children will see lived out in their own lives. Do we set a tone of curiosity or do we create a tone of rigidity? When it comes to concepts like race, class, sexual identity, religion, notions of beauty, and differences in general do we help them become familiar with this diverse world or do we allow them only to see our small individual worlds?

These concepts played out in real life can be quite traumatic and hurtful, limit civil rights and determine where we live and how we live. As parents it is up to us to help navigate this tricky path for our children, especially when we have children who are “different” whether it be because of their gender, physical or mental ability, size, or race, to help protect them from the dangers that “being different” brings. When it is all said and done, we can only impart our lessons, pass on what we know and how we live, and then hope for the best,letting go and allowing our children to grow up and live their lives as they see fit.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my role as a “pace car” for my child. My hope is to raise a mindhearted child who is confident and loving, peaceful, passionate and generous. I hope to set the appropriate pace, gently share the “watch-outs” and eventually allow her to navigate her own path to hopefully be a pace car for someone else.  What are your thoughts about how the role of a pace car is similar to parenting? What kind of pace car will you be?