Sunday, November 21, 2010
The Dangers of Letting Go
Apparently, your job as a parent isn't learning to raise your kids, it's learning to let go of them. When you have a college freshman and 8th grader, that reality is a constant companion. I'm finding as I cope with each, that letting go can be both dangerously easy and easily dangerous.
Shannon and I are not overly protective parents. We have lived with a general philosophy of what doesn't kill them will make them stronger. As long as it didn't have a skull and cross bones on the label, we stood back. We both came by that honestly as children in a world that was a lot less risk adverse. As a teenager, I thought nothing of beating the summer heat of the Sacramento Valley by swimming in the " cow pond" over on the Hamm Ranch or taking a cool drink from the cow trough. Shannon rode her horse everywhere, and she and the gang of kids rode dirt bikes with no helmets and swung from a rotten old rope swing into the concrete lined pond. It's a different world from today where poker is considered a sport, and protective eye-wear is encouraged for ping pong.
Our community used to have a harvest fair in the fall. A combination farmers market and street festival, it was a low-key event that brought our eclectic community together one last time before the cold, rainy winter months. A fixture in the community was an old man, known as "Doc" and his team of draft horses. Doc would drive his team around the old elementary school with a wagon loaded with parents and kids. Nolan, Rayna and I went one year—Nolan was six or seven and Rayna three or four. We met some friends from scouts and the boys ran off to throw darts at balloons or do the ring toss, while I stood admiring Doc's team. People were climbing into the wagon and the horses stood waiting. I held Rayna and she reached out to touch the huge team.
"Is it all right?" I called up to Doc. I grew up around farm animals and knew to always ask.
"Sure", he said.
Rayna leaned away from me and planted both hands on the horse's sweaty, muscular shoulder. The horse didn't even flinch.
"You can put her on his back and take a picture, he won't mind," Doc called down, and Rayna was already lifting up one leg as if she knew the offer was coming.
I pushed my little girl--in a white dress, white stockings and pixie haircut-- on to a horse's back that was higher than my six-foot height. Her little legs stuck straight out from the horse's enormous, round back. I told her to hold on to the hames; the big brass balls at the top of two bars that fit to the neck yolk. I stepped back to get out my camera. I heard someone from the back of the wagon yell "all set." Doc said "get up" and the horses stepped forward, side-by-side. Eight hooves, bigger than Rayna's head, rose and fell, striking the ground hard.
"Don't worry, she'll be fine," Doc hollered over the din of the crowd and noise of the horse and wagon.
I stood there, dumb-struck. My mouth fell open and my mind screamed words, but they stuck in my throat. OH. MY. GOD. My eyes scan the ground, certain I would see her slide between the team and under their trampling hooves.
The course they took was about half a mile long. I could not see Rayna's face, but I could see she was holding on to the hames and staying on the horse. The team turned a corner and I began to think she was fine as long as they did not break into a trot. At that moment, they did just that. I turned away. I could not bear to watch the horrifying sight of my little girl being trampled to death.
My friend Jon stood with me. He watched the slow-motion tragedy unfold. As the team trotted back to the crowd, Jon urged me to "look, she's fine", his voice betraying the relief he felt too. I turned around and saw Rayna still perched where I left her. Her cheeks were flushed and her little hands were red from gripping the cold brass hames. The horse barely stopped when I was by their side, pulling her down.
"Were you scared?" I breathed.
"Nuh, uh", she said.
I hugged her close, and swore I'd never let he go again. She was neither scared nor interested to do it again. Letting her go was so uncontrolled, so easy. It was so easily dangerous.
Nolan will be home in a couple of days for Thanksgiving break. It's the first time he has been home since he left for school in September, and by far his longest time away. I miss him terribly every day, but not like that first week when I would turn myself, and any other parent with a new freshman, in to blubbering fools. We have filled the gap with texts, calls and Skype. I know what he's doing most days, because one of us reaches out to the other.
Shannon and I went to a high school play this weekend—Nolan was a fixture in high school drama. It was a good performance; you can tell the parents whose kids have lead roles, they laugh the longest and clap the loudest. As we walked out of the theater, we didn't go back stage to greet and congratulate the actors, as we always had when Nolan was cast. I was melancholy as we walked to the car as I realized we had let go of an important part of what shaped him and made his high school experience so good. But it didn't last long, and Shannon, Rayna and I went home and made popcorn the old-fashioned way—on a pan on the stove, with real melted butter—and watched Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. In late September I could not have done that.
Letting go of the teenager he was is getting easier. It's always easier to let go of one thing when a better thing is in view. Letting go can get dangerously easy, the result is you drift apart and take years to work your way back.
Then there is Rayna. As a 14-year-old, her job is to begin to be her own person; she is in the beautiful, wonderful, scary, terrible, confusing time of forming her personality. And she is in no particular hurry. She is the most comfortable teenage girl I have ever met. She seems to already know who she is and is perfectly content to let life come at her, and change her, at its own pace. She is brave and incessantly cheerful. She takes what comes for what it is in the moment. She has always just grabbed life by the hames and went along for the ride. This time though, letting go is dangerously easy.
Letting go is difficult. Maybe the hardest thing as a parent is assessing whether it is dangerously easy or easily dangerous.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Life without Training Wheels
No matter how good a student your kid is in grade and high school, there's always that transition into college that you worry about. Will they freeze up and stress out or will they OD on the freedom? It's kind of like riding a bike without training wheels for the first time. A little wobble is manageable, but if you don't grip too tight, nor yell "look ma, No hands!" that first ride is often a success.
Shannon and I have had a simple philosophy when it comes to Nolan and Rayna and school work:
Like me, Nolan was and is a dreamer. It's a beautiful thing to have vivid imagination that is capable of seeing what your future is going to be like. It is an unfortunate and frequent casualty of growing up, that the dreamer in us gets squashed by reality. I never wanted to squash that part of his being. But living through multiple lay-offs and seeing the ugliness and injustice that comes with life—it's hard not to say wake up kid and smell the coffee!
We were amazed at the layers of detail that, at five or six years old, Nolan would use to describe his future—the home or the cars or the job that he would have. He'd describe inventions or environments that he would create. Shannon and I were convinced he would become an architect or an engineer, he was so creative. The push and pull and testing of boundaries is what all of kids do to mature. Somewhere around the 6th grade Nolan's dreaming turned a tad self-centered and materialistic. I can recall a particular conversation as we drove up the drive way in our 1979 pumpkin colored Volvo with 279,000 miles on the odometer:
He gushed,
"I can't wait to get my license, I'm going to have a Porsche 911, and an Audi a4"
"Wow, those are expensive cars..."
"Yeah, I'm going to have a heated garage…"
"How are you going to pay for that?" I said, baiting the reality trap.
"Oh, I'm going to do commercials, or act on a show like Friends—they make like a million dollars a show"
"Uh huh. " I waited until we got in the house to make my move
In addition to the dreamer-gene, Nolan inherited my procrastination gene. It's in middle school that kids get their first taste of freedom. Things like—self-study math—the educational equivalent of the Le Brea tar pits for kids who believe there is always enough time to do the fun stuff first, then whip out the home-work. No sweat. Piece of cake. My mom recalls a particular Christmas break when my approach to self-study math was revealed. It was a particularly cruel, but useful teach technique to send semester grades out a day or two before the long, two-week break. For some reason my mom got home from work as the high school cafeteria manager before I did that Friday. She was ready to make her move when I walked in the door, ready for two weeks of goofing off.
"come here." This was Mom's way of inviting you to a conversation and your first clue it was too late to run
"what?" I said innocently
"Your report card came"
"Lets see, how'd I do? Miss Becker said I did pretty good on my book report", she raised it out of my reach.
"I've asked you every night for a month and you said you didn't have any math home work?" I could see dark shadows fly across the room. My mouth went dry.
"You have an F in math. I called Mr. Bennett and he said you have not turned any assignments in since Halloween." Uh oh.
Mom used a form of aversion therapy—she'd make you wish you'd never do whatever she caught you doing (or not doing) by giving you so much of whatever the vice was that you'd avoid it like the plague. It worked with cussing, smoking cigarettes and home work. At the end of Christmas break I could do multi-function equations in my head—"catching up" eight hours a day for two weeks will do that for you. I didn't miss much homework after that, but I procrastinate to this day. As a Dad, I've taken a different approach. I've tried to show Nolan and Rayna the consequences of not making the right choice. So when Nolan and I walked into the house I asked:
"So what happens of you can't be an actor on Friends?"
"I dunno,"
"Well, you better have a plan."
"Dad, I'm only in sixth grade."
"Yeah that's true, but things like your grades in math now, will affect what jobs you can have", I reasoned
"I hate math, I'm never gonna use this stuff", he echoed over the generation.
"Well, if you don't get good grades now, you won't get good grades in high school. Then you won't get in to college. Then you'll be pumping gas at the chevron." He looked back at me wondering if I was serious or joking; I had a knack for argument-ending finales.
Nothing important ever gets hashed out in single discussion. We had more, "its your life, if you want to pump gas, fine" kinds of discussions. But it wasn't long after that Nolan began going to the Saturday math sessions. At first it was to catch up on some home work that had gone undone; then it was to improve his scores. But he did it on his own. We edited papers and review math, but stopped nagging him through it. It was some time in high school when Shannon and I realized we hadn't even been editing papers any more. Nolan's grades were good, not honor roll good, but he was talking some AP courses.
He had taken his own training wheels off.
As Nolan entered University life, we were anxious to see how he would do: would he succumb to the freedom or get stressed out. He had acquired the self starting habits in high school, but would the pressure or freedom take over? As his first mid-terms and papers came back we were thrilled to see better grades than in high school even.
Now its Rayna's turn. Mr. Lopez, the same math teacher as Nolan, still holds Saturday math sessions. She attended her first Saturday session a couple weeks ago. Like her father and brother, it all started with some missed homework. Rayna is different than Nolan; she is not motivated by the same things. I'm not sure what they are yet.
One of the tricks in parenting is keeping several things going at once—too much focus on one, and the others crash. Nolan's training wheels are off and he is doing very well. Now it's time to help Rayna with her's.
Shannon and I have had a simple philosophy when it comes to Nolan and Rayna and school work:
- Give your best; sometimes that's an A, sometimes it's a passing grade
- You get out what you put in
- This is your only job, do it right
- This is your life, we aren't living it for you
Like me, Nolan was and is a dreamer. It's a beautiful thing to have vivid imagination that is capable of seeing what your future is going to be like. It is an unfortunate and frequent casualty of growing up, that the dreamer in us gets squashed by reality. I never wanted to squash that part of his being. But living through multiple lay-offs and seeing the ugliness and injustice that comes with life—it's hard not to say wake up kid and smell the coffee!
We were amazed at the layers of detail that, at five or six years old, Nolan would use to describe his future—the home or the cars or the job that he would have. He'd describe inventions or environments that he would create. Shannon and I were convinced he would become an architect or an engineer, he was so creative. The push and pull and testing of boundaries is what all of kids do to mature. Somewhere around the 6th grade Nolan's dreaming turned a tad self-centered and materialistic. I can recall a particular conversation as we drove up the drive way in our 1979 pumpkin colored Volvo with 279,000 miles on the odometer:
He gushed,
"I can't wait to get my license, I'm going to have a Porsche 911, and an Audi a4"
"Wow, those are expensive cars..."
"Yeah, I'm going to have a heated garage…"
"How are you going to pay for that?" I said, baiting the reality trap.
"Oh, I'm going to do commercials, or act on a show like Friends—they make like a million dollars a show"
"Uh huh. " I waited until we got in the house to make my move
In addition to the dreamer-gene, Nolan inherited my procrastination gene. It's in middle school that kids get their first taste of freedom. Things like—self-study math—the educational equivalent of the Le Brea tar pits for kids who believe there is always enough time to do the fun stuff first, then whip out the home-work. No sweat. Piece of cake. My mom recalls a particular Christmas break when my approach to self-study math was revealed. It was a particularly cruel, but useful teach technique to send semester grades out a day or two before the long, two-week break. For some reason my mom got home from work as the high school cafeteria manager before I did that Friday. She was ready to make her move when I walked in the door, ready for two weeks of goofing off.
"come here." This was Mom's way of inviting you to a conversation and your first clue it was too late to run
"what?" I said innocently
"Your report card came"
"Lets see, how'd I do? Miss Becker said I did pretty good on my book report", she raised it out of my reach.
"I've asked you every night for a month and you said you didn't have any math home work?" I could see dark shadows fly across the room. My mouth went dry.
"You have an F in math. I called Mr. Bennett and he said you have not turned any assignments in since Halloween." Uh oh.
Mom used a form of aversion therapy—she'd make you wish you'd never do whatever she caught you doing (or not doing) by giving you so much of whatever the vice was that you'd avoid it like the plague. It worked with cussing, smoking cigarettes and home work. At the end of Christmas break I could do multi-function equations in my head—"catching up" eight hours a day for two weeks will do that for you. I didn't miss much homework after that, but I procrastinate to this day. As a Dad, I've taken a different approach. I've tried to show Nolan and Rayna the consequences of not making the right choice. So when Nolan and I walked into the house I asked:
"So what happens of you can't be an actor on Friends?"
"I dunno,"
"Well, you better have a plan."
"Dad, I'm only in sixth grade."
"Yeah that's true, but things like your grades in math now, will affect what jobs you can have", I reasoned
"I hate math, I'm never gonna use this stuff", he echoed over the generation.
"Well, if you don't get good grades now, you won't get good grades in high school. Then you won't get in to college. Then you'll be pumping gas at the chevron." He looked back at me wondering if I was serious or joking; I had a knack for argument-ending finales.
Nothing important ever gets hashed out in single discussion. We had more, "its your life, if you want to pump gas, fine" kinds of discussions. But it wasn't long after that Nolan began going to the Saturday math sessions. At first it was to catch up on some home work that had gone undone; then it was to improve his scores. But he did it on his own. We edited papers and review math, but stopped nagging him through it. It was some time in high school when Shannon and I realized we hadn't even been editing papers any more. Nolan's grades were good, not honor roll good, but he was talking some AP courses.
He had taken his own training wheels off.
As Nolan entered University life, we were anxious to see how he would do: would he succumb to the freedom or get stressed out. He had acquired the self starting habits in high school, but would the pressure or freedom take over? As his first mid-terms and papers came back we were thrilled to see better grades than in high school even.
Now its Rayna's turn. Mr. Lopez, the same math teacher as Nolan, still holds Saturday math sessions. She attended her first Saturday session a couple weeks ago. Like her father and brother, it all started with some missed homework. Rayna is different than Nolan; she is not motivated by the same things. I'm not sure what they are yet.
One of the tricks in parenting is keeping several things going at once—too much focus on one, and the others crash. Nolan's training wheels are off and he is doing very well. Now it's time to help Rayna with her's.
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