Tag: resilience

No Name Calling

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“Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

About ten days ago, a week before my daughter’s elementary school let out for the summer, there was a school Field Day where the entire student body of 400 kids played games at 28 stations to earn food and prizes. They were looking for volunteers so I tended the soccer kick station with another parent.

It was an easy 10 feet kick into a goal. We had a lot of kids come by – Kindergartners who had feet about the size of a deck of cards, differently abled kids that came by with their instructional aides, and most of the student body including the 5th graders who looked like they were ready to take on the world.

Everyone was displaying great spirits until one girl, perhaps in the 4th grade came by with a friend and gave the ball a kick. I shouted “Wuhoo” and she said, “Don’t say ‘Wuhoo.’ I’m a failure.” And I said that she kicked the ball with lots of strength and she repeated, “I’m a failure.”

Her ball hadn’t gone in (we didn’t really require that) but most kids could get it in, even the little Kindergartners. So I gave it her the ball again and said, “Kick it again.” And she did – without even really trying and it didn’t go in. She said, “See, I’m a failure.”

I was flummoxed. Her assertation that she was a failure was a wall that seemed to keep everything from going in. With that up, it didn’t seem like anything could penetrate.

With the first post I wrote about confidence, I can, I quoted author and psychiatrist Neel Burton who distinguished confidence from similar concepts by explaining confidence is feeling “I can,” self-esteem is feeling “I am” and pride is the feeling of “I did.”

When the little girl came to the soccer kick station, she both asserted that she couldn’t and that she was a failure. And once that was in the air it seemed to operate like a foregone conclusion for which there was no quick fix.

Because we can fail over and over again and still be confident. Here are some examples.

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan

“Failure is only an opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” – Henry Ford

“A woman who never gives up can’t fail.” – Abby Wambach

The distinction seems to lie between admitting we’ve failed without calling ourselves a failure. I hadn’t thought much about that small difference until I heard researcher and author, Brené Brown tell a story about when her daughter was in pre-school. The pre-school teacher told Brené that one day after Brené’s daughter had been doing art at the glitter table the teacher said to her, “You are a mess.” And the daughter retorted, “I might be messy right now but I’m not a mess.”

In the retelling, Brené laughed and said that her roots as a shame researcher were visible. We can describe our current situation without calling ourselves names. No name calling is a rule in my household since I heard that story, and I apply that to the conversations I have with myself as well.

My daughter overheard me telling my mom about the little girl who called herself a failure at Field Day and was fascinated by the story. It was a great opportunity to talk with her about what happens if we believe the names we call ourselves. I hope the ripple effect is that she won’t call herself names and maybe even say something if she hears someone else doing it.

This is my fifth post about confidence. Here are the others:

I Can

Fear and Confidence

Growth Mind-set

Bossy Pants – Confidence and Leadership

The Sleepover Test

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“If you are walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.” – Barack Obama

When I had a dog, one of my goals was to make him an easy dog for someone else to take care of. It was a practical limit on how much I spoiled him because boy, did I spoil him! But he had to be trained so that if he was inside a house, he didn’t destroy things that weren’t his toys and his routine was simple enough (2 meals, 2 walks) that it wasn’t unreasonable to ask someone else to do. Outside of that, I thought it was fine to let him go everywhere with me, rub his belly and sing to him and say our prayers together at the end of the day with a kiss goodnight but those were extras.

I was thinking about this yesterday as I packed a suitcase so that my 6-year-old could sleep over at her aunt and uncle’s house. It’s only been a handful of times that she’s been away from me for a night and it’s been a long time – maybe a year or 18 months?

But as I got her ready, I was pleasantly surprised that I every confidence that she could go spend one night away and be okay getting herself ready, going to bed, and paying attention to what they told her to do. In fact, I had no written instructions to go with her at all. At one point I thought to text her aunt what time she went to bed but my daughter had already told her.

This seems like a parenting milestone I feel proud to reach. Like with my dog, I’ve raised a human being to a level that another person could reasonably care for. Yay!

Of course, I packed the suitcase mostly with stuffed animals, it’s good she’s only gone overnight because she might not eat anything that they serve and it’s only this stress free with about 3 people in this world. But hey, she’s only 6-years-old so I have more time to work on the rest 😉

Postscript: In contrast to the other day where I had high expectations that my son and I were going to have a great time alone and all he did was miss her — this time I had low expectations because I feared all he was going to do was miss her. And he only asked about her once and had a BALL being the center of attention. 🙂

Dispelling Shame

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“What you cannot turn to good, you must make as little bad as you can.” – Thomas More

We bumped up against shame a couple times this past weekend. As always, it left a mark.

The first time was when a group of young kids, including my 6-year-old daughter and her friend were looking into a stream that’s on the way to the salmon spawning grounds. They weren’t doing anything wrong and I believe the grown-up that was with them was making sure they weren’t going to but an activist yelled at them in case they were thinking of stepping into the water.

The second was when my daughter dropped an old iPhone that I’d given her to play with. It’s so outdated that it doesn’t have any value to a grown-up and can’t connect to the Internet but it does turn on and take pictures. She’s old enough now to understand the cachet of a phone and was so excited that she even put on jeans so that she’d have a pocket to carry it in.

But when she discovered that after dropping it a few times the screen had cracked, she followed suit and cracked. Her melt down was in part because she accurately assessed that I wouldn’t replace it. But more than that, she was ashamed that people would know she was a person who couldn’t take care of a phone.

Shame reminds me of an incident when I was 18-years-old. I was with a group of guys in a bar in Idaho. We were too young to buy drinks so we were just standing around when someone who we’d helped tow his boat earlier in the day offered to buy us a pitcher of beer. I was the closest and because I didn’t drink, I said, “no thank you” even though I meant “not for me.” The guys I was with could have killed me. But no one said anything.

This incident still marks me more than 30-years-later because I’ve never talked about it. I felt like a goodie-two-shoes even though I didn’t care – I just misspoke. Even typing it makes me feel that burn all over again. It’s because it’s so trivial and yet I still remember that I know how powerful shame can be.

After the incident at the stream this weekend, my daughter and her friend bumped into each other and they got into a kerfuffle about space. As an observer, it was clear it had nothing to do with who bumped whom and everything to do with discharging the shame of being yelled at by a stranger when they very much like to follow the rules.

The night the phone cracked I sat with my daughter at bedtime and we talked about shame. About how silence and secrecy are the things that shame feeds on and if we want to stop the shame spiral, we have to talk about it lest we give it the power to make us feel unworthy.

As we talked, I realized that I was confused as a parent about which message to emphasize because I think taking care of the things we own is important. But making the distinction between it was bad to drop the phone and being a bad person because she couldn’t take care of the phone was more important to me. Because shame leaves a mark. But how deeply etched the mark is depends on how quickly we can pull out of the shame spiral.  

As a postscript, when my mom came over last night, my daughter pulled out the phone she had hidden when she was ashamed and talked about what was on the phone, how it got cracked and what we need to do to take care of our stuff. It was like getting immediate feedback on a test and we passed. Phew!

Rock On

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“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

As my six-year-old daughter and I walked in the rock climbing gym yesterday she pointed to a corner of the bouldering room and asked, “What are they doing there?” I responded that they were redoing all the routes in that section of the gym and she exclaimed, “But I was working on that one! I really liked it!” And then we went upstairs and commiserated with the camp coaches who were feeling the same thing.

I totally understand that sense of loss. In order to make room for new things, old ones have got to go. But sometimes I’m not ready to move on and the Universe does it for me. I’m talking about rock climbing routes — and also relationships, phases of life and things I find comfort in. Like my pajama pants that are exactly perfect so I’ve worn them forever and I loved them until they are almost in tatters and will likely disintegrate if I wash again. I’ll probably put them in the wash only to find they have “been disappeared” by some Divine force.

When I was little I had this blanket that I carried with me everywhere, my binky. We lived in the Philippines but came to the United States on extended vacation every two years. It was on this trip when I was five years-old that my mom decided that I shouldn’t need the blanket anymore, hid it from me and told me it was lost. I have a vague memory of looking for it everywhere – even in my parent’s luggage. Sooner or later I moved on but not without a lot of grief for Binky.

I think about this as a parent because I try to have infinite patience for my kids to grow out of things instead of creating timelines and thresholds. I seem to be doing a lot of work so that they won’t experience grief and I wonder if I’m doing them any favors. After all loss and renewal is one of the most elemental cycles of life.

When I went to pick my daughter up from rock climbing camp yesterday, I brought my climbing shoes with me so we could work on finding a new bouldering route together. We grieved for the great routes we’d lost like that purple one where she was just one hold from the top practicing her lean back technique. Then we climbed, fell and laughed together trying out new ones. It was a great way to experience resilience in the aftermath of loss. I left feeling so strong and inspired, I may actually get rid of those pajama pants myself. But don’t hold me to it…

The Perfect Gift

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“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” – John Lennon

On a sunny evening this past week I had just put my toddler to bed and my 5 ½ year old daughter was just starting a popsicle while watching her show before bedtime when we heard the ice cream truck outside. She put down the popsicle, started bargaining with me about whether she could get something from the truck all the while moving towards the door. But by the time we’d gotten our shoes and my wallet and gone outside, it was just turning the corner about 100 yards away. It didn’t take her long to realize that we were too late. She sighed, took a deep inhale, then brightened up and said, “It’s okay. Basically, I have a good life.”

And that was what I wanted for Mother’s Day. Healthy kids that are resilient through the ups and downs in life and can express themselves. Really it’s what I want to be too. In the moment before she said it, I couldn’t have defined it as succinctly. But as is often the case with perfect gifts, once I got it, I understood it was exactly what I needed.

Happy Mother’s Day Everyone!

Healing the Divide

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“In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein

There’s a divide that runs right down the middle of my family of origin – I call it tree people and forest people as inspired by the phrase “Can’t see the forest for the trees.” The tree people are so good at details that they are the ones you want to invite if you need help painting a room or weeding a patch of garden. The forest people are generally better at navigating the ups and downs of life and are the ones you want to invite when you need advice or help troubleshooting a systemic problem. Even with different perspectives, we managed okay until a tree person sued a forest person. Now it’s hard to see that we all stem from the same ground.

So I’ve thought a lot about the root cause (pun intended) about the pain in my family. And when I read the following passage about belonging in Brene Brown’s book Braving the Wilderness, it resonated as the real reason that my family is divided.  

“Even in the context of suffering – poverty, violence, human rights violations – not belong in our families is still one of the most dangerous hurts. That’s because it has the power to break our heart, our spirit, and our sense of self-worth. It broke all three for me. And when those things break, there are only three outcomes, something I’ve borne witness to in my life and in my work:

1. You live in constant pain and seek relief by numbing it and/or inflicting it on others;

2. You deny your pain, and your denial ensures that you pass it on to those around you and down to your children; or

3. You find the courage to own the pain and develop a level of empathy and compassion for yourself and others that allows you to spot hurt in the world in a unique way.

Brene Brown

My dad was a Presbyterian pastor and so the church defined our lives growing up. Amidst all the wonderful things that came with the church community – friendship, values, service and faith, came an unfortunate side effect of an expectation of conformity to an image of a good Christian kid. As the youngest kid, I think the inferred expectation of having to be a living example was much lower or it just didn’t phase me but I imagine that it was harder for my siblings. As such the feeling of not belonging because they didn’t fit the precise mold began early.

I think about this a lot with my kids. As a side effect of being at home together in this year of pandemic, although sometimes feeling cramped, we have enjoyed the luxury of more time building the base of belonging. Now with schools opening up and more activities available, I am both relieved to see my kids start to branch out and concerned with keeping that feeling of deep connection going. I saw some great advice posted by Tina Payne Bryson, co-author of The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity and Resilience in Your Child: “If you are a parent of a baby or toddler, then I have two big tips for you: 1) Delight in your child. It doesn’t have to be all the time, but find time every day to truly delight in them. 2) Take care of yourself. You matter, too.” It’s great advice because when I delight in my kids, I’m present and celebrating who they are and it not only works for my toddler by also my 5-year-old.

I don’t yet know whether my kids are forest people or tree people. Seeing my family’s experience has taught me that I’m willing to work hard to ensure that my kids know that whichever they are, that we inhabit the same ground, stem from the same Earth and are fed from the same soil. We might not see things from the same perspective but I’m betting that if we know we belong together, we will be willing to share our experience, our lives and our delight. Here’s my hope – if I start with my kids then the goodness of healing will ripple out maybe to my family of origin and then beyond.