Lessons in Parenting, take 2,376

…in which we learn yet more about this being-a-parent thing, and explore when to push and when to ease up -- with everyone

The setting is, on the surface, practically idyllic. We’re in the middle of the summer holidays, spending a week in a little town outside Les Sables d’Olonne, in western France on the Atlantic Ocean. We’ve rented three bikes, so we can cruise over to the beach easily. The owners of the bungalow we’ve rented own a surf school 5 minutes down the road. This plus the ocean so accessible, and all I’ve been envisioning is how we are SO surfing.

It’s day one, and we decide to get started early in the week so we can go several times if we want to. We drop by the surf school, get our boards, put on our wetsuits. All good — though I note peripherally that something seems a little off today with le petit garçon. Is it tiredness? It’s probably just tiredness from the journey. Some kind of grumpiness that’ll fade once he hits the water. Like I often do, I push it aside, or if I’m honest more like trample over it, as I focus on my goal. We are SO surfing.

Recently, maybe since turning 50, I’ve noticed that this approach proves to be not very effective. I can turn into a slavedriver, trying so hard to have Fun that I am not really fun to be around. It’s happened in the kitchen, when we bake together: I stubbornly won’t let go of my vision about what should happen and how. So, there is, possibly, this kind of background noise today.

However. Lest I diverge too much into self-criticism, like it’s all my fault, let’s continue our exploration.

We all head into the water. So far so good. But like I said, the grumpiness — it builds a little. Things aren’t quite right. The board seems especially unwieldy somehow. A crashing wave results in a clenched jaw and early signs of tears forming, not a playful smile.

After ten or fifteen minutes of struggling, I acknowledge that this isn’t working out as I’d hoped. And then I am the one who turns grumpy. An unpleasant thought pops into my head: Uh oh, my kid is a wimp. And I can see that his father, whom I would not describe as pro-wimp, is thinking something along the same lines. My son appears to be giving up at the slightest hint of frustration, and I am so irritated. I know he’s capable of more!

In my mind, I elevate it to an impressively global level, in record time. The world we live in! It discourages us from trying harder, with all its instant effing gratification. Before long I am spiraling: this shouldn’t be happening! This should be fun! Something is terribly wrong!

Ask me if it’s pretty, or even helpful. Not really, no.

On this beach, which is otherwise sandy, there are a lot of little rocks just where the waves break. It’s not a huge deal — just as you enter the water it’s pebbles for a few steps, and once you pass that, all good, you’re back in the sand. But it does mean that as you come back to shore, for example on your belly on a boogie board, you could scrape your toes if you let them drag. Not a huge deal, as I say, but something to look out for.

So naturally, what happens next is that my child cuts his toe on a rock. A little baby cut, typical of a beach visit in just these conditions. But he looks down and freaks. “My toe!” he cries. And with all the other things that aren’t going right — the waves, and the board, probably some leak in his wetsuit — this is the straw, for him.

Turns out, it is for me too. The end of my patience.

Once he sees blood, the urge to give up is irresistible. I need to take a break, he pleads. (Wails? It sure sounds like wailing to me.)

I look at my watch. We’ve been in the water like thirty seconds. How I could possibly have a child like this? I unhelpfully wonder.

I am learning more and more about helpful vs. unhelpful questions. “How can this be true?!?” lies squarely in the “unhelpful” column. My brain can’t answer that question, because it’s not concrete; it just wigs out and wrings its hands.

★

To make matters much less better, the bulldozer in me then insists on entering the picture. A great quality when you’re shoveling walks or facing down the final hundred meters of a swim workout; not so much in delicate interpersonal situations. But I’m like, this isn’t the kind of thing that derails us! A stupid cut? A little blood? Everyone knows that cuts in oceans look and feel worse than they are!

★

A little voice, a sort of angel, grabs me by my collar and pulls me back. Hoooold up there, cowgirl.

I pause. It dawns on me, in a tiny, bright moment of grace: What exactly does that mean, “everyone knows”?

When did I learn this thing I assume is common knowledge? Here, in this instance: When did I learn that cuts hurt worse in the ocean? And how many times did I have to relearn it before it soaked in? Is it a bad instinct, really, to recoil from pain and blood?

I know it happens with language. I’ll use a word I think is common knowledge — some abbreviation or turn of phrase — and le petit garçon’ll clearly have no idea what I’m talking about. I have to think, When did I actually learn this, and — particularly given his context, a kid in a francophone country speaking English at home — when would he have learned this?

I happened at Lac de Perriol just this summer, when he stepped on a bee and got stung, and came running back in panic. It made me pause and wonder, when I noticed my impatience at his distress and urgency: When did I learn what happens during the bee-sting process? That the pain subsides after less than a day and they’re not debilitating nor are they reason to stop activity? 

When you’re parenting little kids, a lot of time goes into explaining things. When they’re young, it’s really obvious: tying shoes, crossing the street, pouring juice into a glass, cutting food … it all required explanation and instruction. But as they get older, it’s a little less clear. But I forget that there’s still so much he’s encountering for the first time, that his world isn’t mine.

The list is so long, of learning that certain causes resulted in other effects, that scary things were often less threatening than I thought. New words. Pronunciation. What to do when you break a glass. How to get ballpoint pen marks off the couch. When the bee stings.

How could he know? The question itself helped me back off a little. OK, Una — maybe this is actually totally human.

One of my most central values is compassion for experience and knowledge level. There’s no reason one should know more than one does, and there’s no shame in questions. Better to engage with curiosity and set aside the self-judgement. Sounds wise, right? I just keep forgetting to apply it.

★

Right. Back to our story. The ocean.

I need to take a break.

All my instincts and energy were in favor of 2 options: 1) Get back in that ocean right now, or 2) OK fine, fuck the surfing, but you are definitely NOT going to [x or y fun thing, or sit with an effing screen in front of your face], so you decide.

To be honest, it wasn’t just him. I too wanted to give up.

Yet I know that throwing my frustration back in his face like he’s some adult (and like that ever works with adults anyway) is completely ineffective, if not counter-effective.

★

I don’t know where the tap on the shoulder comes from, the moment of awareness or ideas. It must come from practice; maybe it comes from slowly learning to not believe my stories quite so hard, and that I don’t necessarily have to act on my first impulse right this moment.

That, or — as I have long suspected — I have a committee of angels who gently butt in when I need it most, if I allow them to, and if I listen.

★

This time, I left him on the beach, and sat floating on my board in the ocean, drifting with the waves, and had a thinkt. OK, yes, I have the fear that my son is being a quote-unquote wimp. His father may too. But so what, then? Am I going to give up, or let him give up? As a parent, when do you say, OK, you do what you want, I’m not going to force it, and when do you say, No, I'm pushing you a little bit here because I think there’s just a hurdle we need to find our way around or over, because there may be something for us on the other side?

★

Somehow, I managed to leave my fine then, fuck you! energy in the water. Returning to the beach, I said, OK, you can sit out for a little bit. But we’re not just sitting and looking down at the sand, dejected. No. I just want you to look at the other surfers. Observe what they’re doing. How are they starting? How are their boards positioned? How do they get up? Do they kneel first, and if so for how long? Which foot goes first? Use this “break” to catch your breath, but also to observe and learn. And then we’re going back in.

My off-the-cuff theory was that there is a big difference between giving into frustration versus using a pause to take a breath, and learn. It also came to me that the idea that something should come easy, especially something we practice just a few times a year, is a little crazy, no? A little unrealistic?

★

I left him there while I played in the water a little while, and then I came back to shore to check in. You ready?

I would like to say that it was smooth as butter, that after a 10-minute pause we went back into the water and he had the greatest surf session of the summer. (I mean, if we want to be literal about it, if it’s the only surf session of the summer, it’s by definition the greatest, right?) That is NOT what happened. But we did go back in the water.

I joined him, and even though I thought he should know how to line up his board, I mean what a basic move [+ eyeroll], I helped him do it anyway. We decided to move from the experienced-surfer section to the surf-school area, and we already felt better seeing people biff and tumble and struggle alongside us. But we also observed some moments of grace and success, and I think we took those as inspiration. I did, anyway. And we agreed, OK, this time we’re just going to focus on one thing.

He started to say things that weren’t quite as give-uppy as before, more neutral observations. I think I’ve forgotten which foot to put in front.

OK! There we go! Now we have something to work with. A concrete, judgment-free observation. Let’s keep watching people. Where are they putting their feet while they’re waiting for the wave?

We gave him one achievable goal for the next wave. Try to get to your knees. That’s all you have to do. Then we see what happens, and take it from there.

Concrete and achievable.

We spent a good 45 minutes at least in the water, playing, momentarily forgetting our cut toes, our leaky wetsuits, watching and playing, learning, dancing in the water and in the waves.

Later, I tried my best to channel Dr. Becky and summarized for him what I observed. Did you notice what happened? You took the break you needed, and then you went back in and tried again. And you learned some things. And I think it’s a tall order to expect ourselves to be successful, or even upright (let alone amazing), in activities we don’t practice very frequently.

★

This parenting thing is so unnatural for me. The playful energy, the patience, and most especially the imagination, and the self-confidence to think of myself as a parent, or a leader. A recovering people-pleaser, I struggle with self-confidence, and setting clear boundaries. My unmet needs haunt my parenting.

But in this same spirit of self-compassion that I hope to direct toward this 13-year-old, I grant myself a little grace. How could I possibly know how to parent an adolescent expertly, if I’ve never done it before? Could I open up, give myself a break, expect a little less, and become curious?

★

This whole summer brought up so many questions. Among them, these three:

—    How can we set our kids up for success?

—    How can I set myself up for success?

—    How can I cultivate wonder, and interest — and is it even possible to do that in another person?

★

A few things come to mind: curiosity, and low expectations. What’s one thing I could do, something small and achievable? Like a scientist — experiment, and let that be a guide to the next step. Then celebrate that. And who knows — like le petit garçon, maybe I will go for knees at the very minimum, and then get out there and find out I feel the confidence and courage to get to my feet even, though I hadn’t planned on it.