Category: Parenthood

Trust Me

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“Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.” – Confucius

My toddler has learned to say, “Help me” when he needs assistance. He pronounces it with a soft “h” so it comes out “elp me” but it still is very effective at signaling when he wants help opening or moving something.

What’s fascinating to me is that even at 2 ¼ years of age, he is already learning some selectiveness of who he wants help from. He’s happy to let his older sister help him open pouches (those packets of apple sauce he can squeeze out and drink down) and fruit snacks because she doesn’t like those and never takes a cut off the top. But he does not want her to help him open candy or toys because she often takes a sample first.

Watching these two, it’s like they are illustrating the concepts of trust from the recently aired Brené Brown Dare to Lead podcast with author and leadership coach, Charles Feltman entitled Trust: Building, Maintaining and Restoring It.

Charles Feltman’s definition of trust is: “choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions.” Wow – I had to listen to that one twice.

And when we choose to trust another person or company, we not only expect that they’ll take care of what we value but do it how and when we want. This makes me think not only of many examples from my career but also of the precious few clothes that I take to the dry cleaners and entrust them to take care of them, clean them and get them back to me on time.

Charles Feltman colors the definition in with several additional factors: sincerity (meaning what you say), reliability (meeting the commitments you make), competence (having the ability to do the job), care (having the other person’s best interests in mind).

The podcast had so many great examples at how we build and also destroy trust at work. Often overcommitting so that we can’t actually meet the deadline or pretending we have competence that we don’t are some of the ways we erode trust. Those descriptions brought back my first year of work after graduating college. I had been hired to build out the computer network for the local electric utility using Union labor from their Communications department. I overcommitted all the time and pretended I knew what I was doing again and again before I learned my lessons to check with the team before making promises.

But eventually my reliability and competence caught up with my care and sincerity and I was able to build and in some cases rebuild, trust. And then I moved on to manage people and experience the other side of the relationship.

All of this gives me great hope for my daughter who wants to be a big help to her brother but can get distracted by what she wants. My kids are learning to trust and to be trustworthy one interaction at a time. They don’t always get it right but they seem to learn a little bit every time they negotiate it as do the rest of us!

Say More

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“You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life and what you’ve become yourself.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

The other day I was having a conversation with an acquaintance that I know professionally. She was sharing her concerns for her younger son who is starting his freshman year of college 3,000 miles away. Trying to find the balance between listening well and not prying, I remembered a prompt that I’d picked up from a Brene Brown podcast, “Say more.”

It works like a can opener! I’m a pretty good listener but since I think the art of listening always can be improved, I’m always trying to expand two things to make me better: curiosity and space.

My acquaintance was telling me that her son got a nose ring and was trying out partying. Her story had two threads. One was a little bit of a mother’s grief because she thought she knew who her son was and thought that he did too. And who he was, a smart geek, didn’t match with his freshman year antics.

The second was her effort to be open supportive of her son as he grew and changed. As he texts her updates about what he’s doing, she is trying to find the right balance of how to respond. In many ways, she said she wished he wasn’t telling her because she was having to walk the line of condoning what he was doing.

Curiosity and space. It’s what her son is experiencing in these first months of college. It’s what my friend is trying to give her son. It was what I was trying to give her so that she could vocalize her story. Two gifts that allow us to change and to still say more.

(featured image from Pexels)

Spilled Milk

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“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” – Joshua J. Marine

Can we talk about spilled milk? I completely believe, “No crying over spilled milk.” When my kids spill milk – no problem. But when I spill milk, I have a much harder time finding graciousness. The other morning I spilled a glass that I had just filled before I could get a top on it. I found myself reviewing my rhythm of the morning trying to find what I hadn’t done well enough so that I was in such a hurry and spilled the milk.

Years ago when I read the famed psychiatrist Dr. Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Traveled for the first time, I was captivated by his explanation of the continuum between neurosis and character disorder. If you are neurotic, you tend to take too much responsibility for the events of your life and if you are character disordered, you tend to take too little. The beautiful takeaway quote from that section is, “…the problem of distinguishing what we are and what we are not responsible for in this life is one of the greatest problems of human existence.”

There is no doubt that I exist on the neurotic side of the continuum and having kids has made it more pronounced.

My tendency to take personal (over)responsibility for one has evolved into personal responsibility for three people. If my kids doddle on the way to bed and I don’t manage to get them to bed on time, I believe it’s my fault that they’ll have a poorer shot to have a good day the next day because they aren’t well-rested. There is a whole post I need to write (and read) on shifting that responsibility from me to them as they age.

But it has created a lot of great ground for meditation. Because as I create space to observe my own ego, I have a much better chance of observing when I overreach the boundaries of my responsibility. Sometimes, the milk just spills.

This brings back a poignant conversation I had with my ex-husband about the concept of neurotic vs. character disordered right around the time we were finalizing our divorce. As I explained what Dr. Peck’s long experience and training in psychiatry revealed, he proclaimed himself the only person that is right in the middle with no tendency one way or the other. It seemed his self-awareness could stretch just enough to know that he was not neurotic but couldn’t quite expand far enough to own that he tends to take too little responsibility. It was such a deeply ironic moment — and one that I remember just quietly witnessing because it explained so much.

There is a delightful space that I find now and again where I can just admit, “I spilled the milk” and laugh about it. When I do, I know I’ve found some balance and the milk is just there to help remind me.

(photo from Pexels)

Stories Again

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“The best and most beautiful things cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt by the heart.” – Helen Keller

My 6-year-old daughter declared the other day that she had it all planned out. She was going to go back to being a baby. That way she could be carried everywhere, be picked up every time she cried and wear diapers so she never had to use the bathroom.

I started gently exploring this idea. I asked “So you are going to give up reading?” Her answer “No way!” And then I asked if she was going to sleep in a crib again so that she wouldn’t be able to get out and come sleep in my bed whenever she pleased. Again – “NO!!”

We’ve had extensive conversations about the fact that when she was 2-years-old like her brother is now, I only had one kid so she got carried everywhere and my attention was only on her. Not only did she get everything that her little brother is getting now, she got it in an even more focused fashion.

That logic does nothing to stop the feeling of jealousy over the easy life she perceives her brother has. Fortunately, they adore each other so she doesn’t begrudge him much. But she sure wishes she had more and it does not work to rationalize it away.

So on a whim I switched to telling her stories about when she was 2. Like the time we went to the Fall Pumpkin Festival and I was trying to carry her and a big pumpkin and then the pumpkin stem broke off. Or the time we went to Canada and how it seemed like the whole trip she was either on her uncle’s shoulders or being swung by her arms between 2 adults.

The stories work. They calm the sense that her little brother is loved more in a way that logic doesn’t. It’s like fighting fire with fire. They engage her heart and are proof that she is someone and has always been someone worth telling stories about.

It makes me think about the last time I heard someone tell a story about me. It was about the time I invited a family that I didn’t know to stay with me when my son was two-months old. The mom was a friend of a friend and she had come to town to help her college aged daughter after she had gotten hit by a car while jogging. The mom, her daughter, her son and the daughter’s boyfriend ended up staying with us for almost 2 months and we had a great time. The story I heard about me was, “Who invites strangers to live with them when they have a newborn?”

Hearing it makes me feel brave, strong, and open. Maybe a little crazy but in a good way. The stories people tell about us – they convey much more than just the adjectives. And of course, there are the stories we tell ourselves like I wrote in one of my favorite posts The Most Influential Person in the Room.

The power of stories keeps showing itself to me. In our spiritual traditions, in our self management, in our relationships, it seems we have the opportunity to reach down deep, touch our core and lift each other up at such a deep level with this one tool. So I’m practicing responding with prose instead of facts. Sometimes it feels like a lot of work. But hey, it’s better than changing the diapers for two kids if she goes back to being a baby!

Photo of the week: Oct 23rd

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Last weekend my friend Eric and I took the kids on a long bike ride. My toddler was in a bike seat behind me and my 6-year-old was on a third wheel bike attached to Eric’s.

It was a gorgeous fall morning with moderate temperatures, colorful fall leaves, not too many clouds and we biked five miles to a marina on the waterfront where we met my brother and sister-in-law. And we got to ride bikes down the dock!

Along the route we saw so many interesting things in addition to the water, boats and beautiful leaves:

  • A draw bridge go up right as we were passing underneath so the movement and the sound of the mechanism echoed and clanged right over our heads.
  • A police car that disgorged a cop right in front us carrying what my daughter thought initially was a radar gun but turned out to be a cup of coffee.
  • A woman with pink hair getting ready for a breast cancer benefit race.
  • A little kid not much older than my toddler wearing a shark helmet, riding his own bike with his dad and trying so hard to race us.

So when my daughter said to my brother, “Guess what we saw on the way here?” I was surprised by her answer, “A dead bunny.”

We all see things differently… 🙂

COVID Crush

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“We are fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.” – Japanese Proverb

My daughter came home from first grade the other day and announced that Will has a crush on her. “Will?” I asked because I wasn’t familiar with that name. She said, “Yep. He’s from another class but he’s also a number 15.”

Apparently the school has the hearts that they line up on outside numbered. My daughter’s is number 15 and so is her new young friend’s.

My friend Eric calls it a COVID crush and had some other suggestions for other pandemic rom-coms:

Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have face masks made of the same material. Breathless in Seattle?

Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet meet at the drugstore while getting booster shots. CVS-ic?

Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore have to quarantine in the same Irish village. 15 Dates in Isolation?

My daughter told me she has a crush on Will too. Sometimes the hearts just line up!

Wounds or Scars

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“Suffering makes an instrument of each of us, so that standing naked, holes and all, the unseen vitalities can be heard through our simplified lives.” – Mark Nepo

The other day I shook out the blanket that I keep outside for lying on the grass in summer and my son immediately starting looking for the little farmhouse that we usually play with on it. I am fascinated by how quickly my kids make associations. Blanket = Little People farm. A particular cup = hot cocoa. Boots = puddles. Baths = lotion.

But that observation makes me realize how much I do it as well. Fall comes and I think of hot cider. I turn on Grey’s Anatomy and want a glass of wine. When I write I sit in one chair and when I work I sit in another.

It seems to be a way to winnow down our choices so that we don’t have to make as many decisions. But every once in a while a pattern crops up that reminds me of where I stuck. The other day my daughter was carpooling with friends and they asked if there was a particular car she didn’t like. She said BMW’s. And they asked why and she said it was because her mom didn’t like them.

I had to laugh when my carpooling friend told me this story. My daughter and I had been talking about cars and I’d offhandedly said that I didn’t like them because it seemed like the drivers bought them for image. Which is a very unfair broad generalization that I never thought would be repeated. The fact is, my ex-husband bought one to bolster his image and so I created the association. I’ve been over that relationship for some time so I shouldn’t punish BMW drivers forever.

Meditating on this, so many associations came up for me. Many of them are ones that make me smile – places that I walk that remind me of my beloved dog and phrases when I hear them that bring back my dad.

And one that I wasn’t expecting. I miscarried a baby four years ago. When I heard the news, I went to hike a beautiful trail that overlooks Puget Sound. This trail had been my go-to for any time I needed to think. The wind seems to whip whatever is inside me out into the open and the view puts it into perspective.

As I was thinking about associations, I realized that I’ve never been back to that trail since the day I heard the news about my miscarriage. Obviously I went on to have a beautiful son and so I filed the miscarriage away as old news. It isn’t something that I mourn or think of as painful. It just was. But every time I think of hiking that trail, I think “nah” without ever digging deep for the reason.

Life keeps teaching me I can carry around wounds or scars. If I choose wounds, they drain a lot more energy as they try to heal without ever been unpacked. But if I do the work to clean them out and then heal into scars, they just become part of the patchwork quilt that is me.

All of this introspection is a great reminder to me that I can pass things on based on my loves or my losses. And given how easily they clearly stick for my kids, I think it’s time to heal those wounds before any other misguided association gets repeated!

The Courage Not to Quit

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“It always seems impossible until its done.” – Nelson Mandela

When my daughter, her friend and I were biking back from school the other day she absolutely refused to walk her bike up a steep hill even though her friend and I were walking our bikes. She would run out of steam, stop and then start trying to ride again in the middle of the hill. I repeatedly coached her “walk your bike.”

Finally she explained she wanted to be a story. “What does that mean?” She replied, “I want to be a story we talk about at the dinner table.”

I assume this hearkens back to the time she bought an ice cream for her brother from the ice cream truck, all by herself, with her own money and without me telling, choose to get one for him too. I blogged about it in The Great Turnaround post. I was proud of her, she was proud of herself and I told many people the story when they came over for tea or dinner.

So I had to explain that for every epic journey, there is always a time that you want to quit. I’ve never climbed a mountain where there wasn’t a place where I totally wanted to quit. Just mentioning this brings back the time on the Mexican volcano, Mt. Ixtacchuatl right after we left high camp at about 14,000 feet.

It was dark, the middle of the night and we were walking on scree – that loose gravel that shifts every time you set your weight on it so that every step was a scramble and rebalancing effort too. We were on the way to the 17,600 foot summit so we had a long way to go and the only thing I could think was that I’d have to contend with this on the way back too. I totally wanted to quit.

And so I told her that’s where the stories come from – because you want to quit and yet you don’t. Whatever you do to get past that section where it’s hard and bleak doesn’t have to be pretty. The epic stories all have a middle section. Otherwise they aren’t very entertaining..

My daughter looked at me as if she wasn’t convinced. And since she’s 6-years-old and has had very little personal struggle in her life, I suspect that she doesn’t yet have a hook to hang that on.

So the next time she had to ride home from school, her friend’s dad ran behind them and pushed them up the hill as they stayed on their bikes and rode. She returned home to me triumphantly and said, “I have my story now!”

Picture of the Week

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My 6-year-old daughter and her friends wanted to ride bikes to school. It felt hard to do – it was cold, difficult to get everyone ready early and took a lot of coordination with the other parents. As this was our second time doing this, my daughter felt confident enough to lead for some of the ride with me and her little brother on my bike behind her and her two friends following us. We turned a corner and all the difficulty stripped away when I took this picture. The promise of the day meeting the potential of youth.

I was so proud of them. But more importantly, they were proud of themselves.

Riding to school on a crisp October morning

Cut the BS

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“Life is the sum of all your choices.” – Camus

The first time I did preschool with my daughter she had just turned 2 years old and it was a co-op preschool. Parents worked in the classroom one day per week and dropped off our child the other day of the week. The teacher said to us, “Never leave without saying good-bye to your child. It doesn’t work to sneak out.”

I think that might have been the best parenting advice that I may have ever received. I took it to mean to not undermine my child’s trust in me by being sneaky. Just because you can fool a small child doesn’t mean you should. I didn’t know any better at the time but witnessing parents do the “sneak-away” approach at other moments, I’ve seen the resulting effect when it’s happened. The child seems both dismayed that they can’t find the parent as well as beyond consolable because they want the parent for comfort.

I want to claim that I knew sneakiness doesn’t work in life before I was a parent but that would also be BS. I was not attuned to the feeling of tension that signals a choice of not facing or facing the emotions of someone who will be unhappy by what I chose to do. I have ducked out of many parties with a white lie about why I couldn’t come instead of telling the host the truth that I didn’t feel like coming. I shudder to think about the time I canceled going to see U2 with a friend and his son because I had a colossally bad day at work.

But what I’ve learned from parenting isn’t about lying per se – because I don’t tell my kids the truth about many things like Santa and the Easter Bunny and whether or not I’ve ever had sex. It’s more specific to not telling the truth in order to avoid emotions. Like saying we are out of cookies instead of being the bad guy who says “no” because they’ve had too much sugar.

Instead of amplifying feelings by adding the horror of being tricked, this advice has taught me to lean into the discomfort of the initial disappointment. It also honors the emotional intelligence of anyone that I might mislead who can often sense they are being tricked, even at a very young age, even if they don’t know exactly how.

I’m leaving. I will miss you and can’t wait to scoop you up when I return. There is nothing like the sweetness of reunion and it is not possible until we recognize the truth of being apart.

(photo by Pexels)