There are no guarantees in life. We all get that. Striving does not necessarily lead to thriving. Life can whack you upside the head with a curve ball one second and then toss you, ever so gently, a perfectly timed love bomb the next.
That’s what parenting feels like. Up, down, around, above, over, under.
Your first daughter slept eight hours from the age of two months — bliss. But the second child (also a girl, same room, same parents, same routine) keeps you up all night long, every night for months on end. It was the other way around with our girls but you get what I’m saying.
We decided to homeschool our kids for ‘just a few years’ when our oldest was about four years old. I felt capable and content to move in this direction and my husband was totally on board. We weren’t going to be ‘shelter-ers’. No, we wanted to open them up to what the world had to offer outside of the constriction of the school system.
Of the many many homeschooled families we spent time with while putting on dramatic productions, in science classes, on canoe trips, at parks, museums, and on sports fields, none wanted anything but the best for their kids. I mean who makes a years-long decision like that without deep-dive consideration into all the ramifications that homeschooling will have on your childrens’ lives?
Of course, it’s the same for parents whose kids are in school. We’ll do whatever we can to get our mini-me’s on an upward trajectory in life. There are awkward, shy, anti-social kids who are homeschooled. But there are awkward, shy, anti-social kids in school as well. And there are dynamic, kind leaders who are homeschooled just like you’d find at any public or private school.
Kids learn how to cope with life, how to communicate, and how to figure out relationships from their home environment. A child doesn’t have to be homeschooled to pick up the tension, joy, guilt, or encouragement coming from mom and dad. Of course, many external situations can snatch the rug right out from under innocent, unsuspecting rubber-boot-clad feet — COVID, the economy, the anxieties and depressions and other diagnoses, abuses, divorce, death…
Parenting is hard because life can be hard.
Phones and Instagram and TikTok and filters and video games and all the technology don’t make it any easier. We are all just trying to figure it out. So many kids — little ones to adult ones — are going through really, really tough times these days.
Our kids don’t have any serious health issues. They’ve grown up in a home with a mom and dad who are far from perfect but who are on the same team, who like each other as much as they love each other, and who can disagree but can also quickly figure it out. We don’t do expensive vacations and we live in a tiny house but our kids have always had food on the table, clothes in their closets, and a roof over their heads. They haven’t suffered abuse or racism. They’ve had a stable, happy life.
It hasn’t been all butterflies and rainbows but it hasn’t been death and destruction either. We’ve helped them navigate anxieties, two-faced ‘friends’, disappointments, and bad decisions. We’ve had endless conversations about everything — self-worth, drugs, sex, respect, how to become excellent listeners, finances, spirituality, dating and on and on.
They’ve been low, sometimes very low.
But they’ve managed to get find their way up and over their hurdles, sometimes quickly and sometimes not so much. They’re moving in an upward trajectory right now and they’re happy.
Our youngest is working in the trades and will also be doing a firefighting program. He’s deciding if he wants to do firefighting full-time with trades on the side or the other way around. He’s got some great friends, is an avid snowboarder, and is at the gym almost every day. Yeah, he was a bit of a schmuck at 15 and 16 (and yes, while driving him to his friend’s house during that time, I may have sworn at him and his entitled attitude, pulled over, kicked him out of the car, and made him walk while I peeled off in the opposite direction not glancing in my rear-view mirror even once. I knew exactly where he was going and he arrived home very sheepishly in one piece. Not the proudest parenting moment but there you have it).
When he was going through some of his ‘schmuck-iest’ days, my empathetic, communicative husband would feel like he just could not connect with our son. I just encouraged him to just keep pushing in. Just keep the conversation open. Just keep hugging.
He’s just turned twenty and, hallelujah, we have happily said good-bye to those days.
Mostly.
He is so strong on the outside but so mushy on the inside. The older he gets the more the mush he allows to the surface. He is just what this world needs.
Our 22 year-old is getting her degree in Industrial Design and loving every minute of it. She is easygoing, social, and a total creative genius. She took off to Australia and New Zealand when she was eighteen but COVID forced her back home a few months later (a half year early). She spent a year and a half at a university losing her joy in a program she realized was not for her. But all of it forced her to figure out what she really wanted. She’s kicking butt now, planning an overseas co-op and working part-time while in her full-time program at a different school.
She recently went through a through a break-up after a two plus year relationship. Many days my heart broke right in half for her. But it was her decision and it was the right decision. She’s kind of my hero.
This girl is never satisfied with the status quo and has been changing the world for the better since breaking out of the womb.
And the six figure earner? She’s our 24 year-old singer-songwriter. At age 11, her first song ‘Ordinary Girl’ was no chart-topper (well except on the lined paper in her Hannah Montana notebook) but she has written her way into some pretty incredible successes for such a young thing.
My hubby and I have less than zero connections in the music industry and certainly didn’t have the finances to send her off to Berklee in Boston for $60,000/year or to fly her out to LA to find management. But through perseverance and figuring things out unconventionally, she’s written music for film and TV in Toronto (our hood), for a Universal/Peacock series, and is currently pitching songs for a new Nickelodeon series all through contacts she’s made herself. And she’s starting to get paid well for it.
Last fall, a production company in LA put out a contest to find an original song for a proposed, upcoming animated Christmas movie. She went at it with gusto. Her song made it into the top seven and those songs were then judged by three LA music scene bigwigs. The winner would receive a substantial cash prize. Yup…she won.
We hope you get to hear it at a theatre in your home town one day.
She’s kind, humble, and empathetic. She’s dealt with anxiety and is an overcomer.
She knows who she is and how she deserves to be treated.
She’ll make a way for others.
Our kids have learned to search their internal to evaluate their external; this is a developing skill for all of us — my hubby and I included. And it will be until we’re in the grave.
Parenting is hard. And life has never promised smooth sailing from port to port.
Don’t give up. There are so many rewards along the way.
Point your little and big ones toward their individual ‘direction good’.
Most imperatively, keep showing up even when it feels like you’re the biggest thorn/knife/hacksaw in their side.
You are exactly what they need.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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