I heard the librarian announce over the speaker that the library was closing for the evening in fifteen minutes. Perfect. I needed to pick my daughter up from choir in ten minutes, they are rarely finished right on time to the minute anyway and it was about a five minute drive over. I’d head out to the car and have a few minutes to spare … except when I stepped outside, I realized the snow had begun again and I had some clearing to do.
No worries, though, it was fluffy snow, the kind that’s easy to brush off quickly.
With the snow brushed off, I began to open the car door and then noticed a layer of ice still on the windshield, that had been under the snow. Sigh. Okay. I flipped the brush over to the ice scraper end and started scraping, the inside window defrost blasting to give me some reinforcement. Apparently, this was the type of ice that would actually take some muscle. I was aware of the time and scraped with gusto.
In the car, feeling successful with a scraped exterior, I began to pull out, now noticing that some kind of condensation situation had happened and there was a layer of ice – a thickish one – on the inside of the side windows. Oh my. Some inside scraping was needed, at a weird angle, practically hitting myself in the nose with my own elbow. Okay … not the biggest deal in the world. My daughter wouldn’t be waiting alone in the dark. One of the choir leaders would wait the extra couple of minutes.
Pulling out of the parking lot, a middle-aged man in SUV decided to take advantage of the freshly fallen snow and nearly empty parking lot and started doing doughnuts, spinning and drifting all over the lot, just having a grand, old time. I grinned. Apparently, he was not in my position, being late picking someone up😊.
I approached the choir practice building parking lot and realized that I was actually only two minutes late! Yes! Had that all happened in that short period of time? Surely, others would be a bit late, with the snow having started up and accumulating so quickly. Nope. Dark building. Dark woods standing behind it. Empty parking lot, except for one car – the car of the person waiting out front with my daughter for her ride to show up. How could this be the case only a minute after end time?
I pulled up and rolled down the window with a quizzical look. The choir manager, who had been waiting for me, with my daughter, explained they had decided to send everyone home early a while ago when they realized how fast the snow was accumulating. I’m not sure why I didn’t get a call to my cell phone as the other parents did, but it doesn’t really matter. All was well and we headed out for a slow, careful and beautiful drive home in the snow.
It came to mind that this evening of adjusting to the weather actually reminds me of the changing seasons of parenting (bear with me – maybe something will resonate!)
I hadn’t been fully ready for a change of weather. It was still mid fall and my brain wasn’t in winter weather mode. I didn’t have my winter tires on yet, had just tossed my snow brush back in the car the day before and hadn’t even bothered with a pair of mittens. Yep, unprepared. A small dusting of autumn snow here or there made sense to me but I wasn’t thinking of a whole change of scenery.
So, if you are a parent, imagine this. We’re feeling good. We’ve come to an understanding of our child’s age and stage, their interests, passions, gifts, curiosities, daily patterns and we’ve figured out how to support them. It’s taken a while to think through how everybody’s needs, wants and activities weave in within the context of family and life. We have a rhythm and have built in some margin of time and resources and it’s working. We’re in the sweet spot of family life. Things flow.
And then … the season changes. And we don’t have our snow tires on yet (or our mittens) and have only just quickly grabbed a snow brush.
And it can look like so many things.
Sometimes it’s a practical change.
An activity that one child is involved in requires travel and time and takes us away from others but, no problem, younger siblings enjoy coming along and doing something with us while we wait for the other child – until they don’t. Until they’ve outgrown the place that we visit while waiting for the other child on the one hand, but are maybe not quite ready to stay home alone for the period of time you’re gone. Or are they? Maybe they are? Ah, this will take some reflecting and we already did lots of reflecting when we all figured out a way for the activity to work in the first place. Back to the drawing board.
It could be about a change in their interest or focus.
An activity that our child has worked hard at, invested themselves in, maybe even built some of their identity around just ceases to be part of who they are anymore. It seemingly happens all of a sudden. This could be anything – dance, hockey, swimming, an instrument, horseback riding or any number of things that both kids and parents put some planning and money into. They’re just done with it. Not necessarily in a negative way – it’s just finished for them and they’ve gotten out of it what they needed to, at least for the time being. Maybe in hindsight, we can see them moving away from it.
Perhaps we’ve invested a lot into it in different ways – time, money, flexibility of schedule, identity. Is it possible that, bit by bit, we’ve built some of our own identity around our particular child’s activity? And if they’re not doing XYZ anymore, what WILL they be doing? Maybe what they decide to do with that time and space instead doesn’t look like much and isn’t clear to us and so we have trouble seeing the value even though we know it has value to them. Or maybe WE see the value right away but we’re afraid that OTHERS won’t see the value in that openness of space and time. It’s so much quicker and easier to say to people that “so and so” is doing “such and such” with a clear, organized team, group or lessons than to try to explain to people the value of having empty, open space.
It could challenge our values.
Our kids might choose quite different paths and worldviews than we have. It might be for a while or it might be a longer term choice they’re making. That can catch us off guard.
As they become teens and young adults, they may change course as far as what they’d like to pursue for education. They may change their mind back and forth quite a bit and we struggle to keep our wits about us to keep the communication open and supportive.
We may suddenly realize they are in a new season as far as their independence, taking responsibility for all kinds of things in their life. It may not even be a new season for them but we have just noticed it, so it’s new for us. They’ve been waiting for us to catch up:).
They may have a foot in two different seasons.
They can be holding onto some pieces from one season and reaching out to some pieces from another. There can be a back and forth as they figure things out.
And so, we realize that a season in their life is changing. Like the sudden realization that my car was covered with snow, we realize there’s a bit of work to do. Sometimes it’s just a bit of snow to knock off, a practical layer on top that we need to make a change with.
Other times, there’s a bit more to it and there is also that layer of ice underneath. We realize that it’s actually a seasonal change that is going to affect our life as well and will take a bit more work!
Occasionally, like that frozen layer of condensation on the car interior that involves intense scraping, there is that additional barrier to deal with and we need to keep working harder than we thought we’d have to. It might cause us to examine our values and move us to imagine things more deeply from their perspective. We keep scraping, working away at it until we at least can see well enough to move forward.
What can we do?
We can give pause initially and think before reacting. Change, even change that moves toward growth, can be stressful.
We can be supportive and give pause long term before reacting too much because if our kids are shifting into a new season before we expect them to or in a way that challenges our expectations or values, that will take some processing and sorting through.
We can make sure we take a good look within ourselves to sift through what our own gut reactions are, what the root of those might be and how they line up with the situation.
We can listen and observe. Really listen. Really observe. Take some time to have good conversation. Sometimes they might just be clear about where they are in this new season and not want to spend time talking about it. Other times they might be hoping for conversation and guidance.
We can educate ourselves. What opportunities are there? How can we support them? Are they even wanting support? If we’re bothered by something from this new season, find out – is it actually as dangerous as we might imagine it is? If not, how can we shift our thinking? If so, how can we respectfully offer our perspective and important information they may not know?
We can remind ourselves that everyone is stretching. They are stretching in a new choice or stage in life. We are stretching in our way of thinking.
We can connect. Offer time and openness to conversation if they want it. That may not look like, “Hey, do you want to talk about such and such?” It may look more like just being around. Being available. Being interested in them. That way, there’s opportunity for conversation if they’re wanting it but it also shows that you’re interested in being with them either way.
We can acknowledge that things may not come around to how we’d like them to be. We may not actually like the new season. It may be uncomfortable.
We can be open to finding ways to enjoy the new season with them, even if there are pieces we struggle with.
We can realize that we aren’t alone. Other people may have a really great, objective perspective. Many parents are working through new seasons as parents have done for many years. We’re not the only ones who don’t have our snow tires on as a new season arrives with weather we aren’t expecting😉.
As for the last part of the weather story analogy, the part where I picked my daughter up – it reminds me that when we finally get there, we are glad to see that there has been Someone waiting alongside them until we brought ourselves to where we needed to be.
Oh, and hopefully, along that process, there’s a middle-aged guy doing doughnuts and drifts in a snowy parking lot that brings a grin to our face😊.
Any thoughts? Please feel free:).
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Erin, I laughed out LOUD about the snow clearing bit of your story because I know that feeling. I forget so easily to leave time for car clear off🙄.
These are great thoughts. As a grandmother I actually find this article helpful too. We’re always interested in keeping up with those seasons in our grandkids lives but we’re that much more removed sometimes. Thanks for a good read.
Hi Barbara! Yes, it really is easy to forget to leave time. I’m glad you found it helpful – a different perspective as a grandparent but I can imagine, challenging in a whole different way, at times! Thanks for your comment:).
Really good food for thought for me today. Thank you❤️.
Oh, you’re very welcome! Thanks for your comment, Allie.
Hi Erin. Such an interesting way of looking at this. Thank you for mentioning the part about taking time to react It’s quite amazing how much I need to examine my reactions to things even more as the kids get older. They have so many neat ideas and some that throw me for a loop at times so taking the step back to process things before reacting is something I’m trying harder to remember. And examining how things are from their perspective. There’s a lot of think about!!!
Hi Lori. Yes, there is a lot to think about and I’m glad it was helpful. It sounds like you’re really thoughtful in the way you’re going about things.
It’s funny that you mention the idea of remembering to examine things from their perspective. Something timely happened, just now as I began to reply to your comment. My 16 year old son came down to mention some concerns he had about plans for tomorrow so we made some adjustments. He knows I’ll be trying to balance a few things tomorrow and as he said goodnight, he added, “Thanks for taking my idea into consideration.” 🙂