Parenting Do-Overs

It doesn't rain much where I live, but on one particular day over a year ago, it had rained hard all night and was still drizzling in the morning. As Murphy's Law demands, I had had my carpooling, road tripping, overused, 7-seater finally washed...just before it rained. I don't get my car washed very often and I LOVE my car when it's clean. It is also important to this story to know that my teenager likes to put his shoes on in the car rather than in the house before walking to the car (can you see where I'm heading...). On this particular rainy morning, my son walked through the puddles and residual stormy muck to the car holding his shoes in his hands so he could put them on in the car. Once loaded up, he didn't like the wetness and grime on the bottom of his feet, so he wiped them on my clean dashboard. FULL STOP!

I lost it. I blew my top with some high volume content! My stunned teen simply paused, looked at me, and said, "Mom, it's just dirt."

As a parent, I have asked for many parenting do-overs. I see reacting as very different from responding. Reacting is often impulsive and lacks the extra few beats of time required to think things through. Responding is more thoughtful and less emotionally charged. When I behave in a way that is impulsive, reactionary, and emotional rather than thoughtfully responsive, I long to be able to do it over. But let’s face it; there will always be moments of reaction even if we wish we could only be thoughtfully responsive. We’re human and parenting is hard!

I recently read a wonderful blog post by Janet Landsbury entitled, "Parent Do-Overs – 7 Confidence Building Responses." When I first read the title, I thought it would be about something different; how to do parenting do-overs rather than how to do it better the first time around. The seven responses she shares are really good, just not what had me opening the blog. But the idea got my blog-writer going, so rather than wish her blog had been about the topic I wanted to read, I thought I'd write it myself. 

Many years ago, when my kids were much younger than they are now, I began a new “do-over” practice in my parenting. After a reaction that was less than thoughtfully handled, I would usually come to a point a few seconds, minutes, hours, or even days later and think to myself, “whoops, I wish I had handled that differently.” That thought is my signal to head back into the situation with my child and do it over. My next step is to talk about what happened and how I reacted. I like to separate my reaction from the content of my message. Usually, the need to correct the behavior is on point, but my reaction can be an overreaction. I’m a fiery woman and when I’m stressed or deeply concerned, my reaction can be bigger than I intend. My opening lines are usually something like, “I would like to talk about what just happened and how I reacted.” Sometimes, I will even say, “I’d like a do-over to try and respond better this time.”

In the instance of the clean car/dirty feet, my kid's statement brought my overreaction to my awareness rather quickly, in part because he didn't meet my overreaction with a defensive attitude. Instead, he just brought to my attention how disproportional my reaction was to the offense. It's rare that this awareness happens as quickly at it did this time. And still, I had to take a few deep breaths in the moment to be able to move from reaction to response. I clearly needed a do-over. 

First, I apologized for my overreaction and owned that it was too big for the severity of the transgression.  Then, I addressed the content.  This takes a few extra steps. 1) Speak about the action and how I felt about it. 2) Discuss what I needed him to do instead. 3) Share what about the behavior was unacceptable. 

Often our reactions come off as personal attacks rather than about the behavior itself. Do-overs work best when we address the behavior, as well as our feelings and needs.  I find separating my reaction from the offensive action of my kids works better to educate and correct behavior while helping to leave the personal relationship intact. 

It is my belief that overtly stating the need for a do-over with our children helps teach them many things about being human. I hope that my kids have learned and continue to learn that we all make mistakes. And, that owning our mistakes with humility is important. We will try to do better next time and we can even try again this time. Making mistakes is normal and catching ourselves as quickly as possible, owning the mistake, and trying to do better are vital lessons for growth and learning.

We all mess up. That’s part of being human. There is NO way to always do it the best way on our first try (as if there is some quantifiable “best way” anyway!). But that doesn’t let us off the hook entirely either. We need to also notice when we are less than skillful in our parenting or when our reaction doesn’t match the situation, or when we wish we had said something different in the moment.

When children are really young, we can ask for do-overs with our partners or friends. We can say things like, “I just handled a situation with my child in a way that doesn’t feel right. Can I try a do-over with you, so I see how that might feel different for next time?” Do-overs are a wonderful way to learn and grow as parents and as people. I ask for do-overs with my husband too! Now that my kids are teenagers, do-overs are a normal part of our conversations. They help us separate reactions (mine and theirs) from the content of the needed dialogue.

Here’s to doing our best and owning our missteps too. How do “do-overs” work in your family?

Meaningful Ritual and the Alchemical Heat of Marriage

Yesterday was my wedding anniversary, 16 years married to a great man. Strange thing is we don't really even acknowledge our wedding anniversary preferring instead to honor our first date as the special day of relationship celebration. So it wasn't strange really when Brent's annual men's backpacking trip found itself scheduled in such a way as to make it that Brent and I would not even be together for our anniversary. We celebrated our 20th anniversary of being together last February and we did that in a big way, so missing this date together was fine by both of us.

When yesterday I received a collect call from Brent first thing in the morning, I thought, "wow, he wants to say happy anniversary after all and as he's in the middle of nowhere about to start his trail for the day, a payphone will have to do." Turns out, he forgot something and needed to have me arrange for it to make its way to San Fransisco for when he is there following backpacking. After I let him know I thought he was calling to wish me a happy anniversary, we both laughed and loved in a long distance, lots of men waiting to go, kind of way. It was enough and sweet.

 What's strange is that even though we don't really celebrate our wedding anniversary the event of our wedding was highly impactful to our couple-hood. I believe in ceremony. I have felt first hand the transformational significance of ritual. The ceremony that took place in the center of a medicine wheel, on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, in the glaring heat of July, and surrounded by our most beloved people, that ritual of union made a difference in our lives together and how we have held our relationship ever since.

Like most couples, we took special care in planning our ceremony to have as much meaning as possible.We wanted the ritual to be aspects that added to the power of the day rather than empty tradition. And, we wanted everyone there to feel they were part of the ceremony, infused with love and witness to our commitment.

There were lots of aspects to our wedding that were meaningful to us; the prayer flags written by our friends and family, feeling the grass beneath my feet grounding me, walking in guided by the lovely voice of Julie, opening the ceremony with our beloved yoga teacher, Chuck, leading us all in chanting OM, flower leis bringing in my link to Hawaii, breaking the glass (and being barefoot added additional challenges there!) and standing under the chuppa connecting us to Brent's Jewish heritage (and as I had hand made the supports and my aunt sewn the cloth it connected us to my heritage as well), and the powerful sharing offered by loved ones in the council circle. I'm sure there were others, but these are the ones that stick in my mind when I reflect back on that day, those bits and the heat.

Perhaps the heat was a needed part as well, for all alchemical processes require heat! Heat we got! I remember sweat trickling down the backs of my legs while I stood there in the center of the circle facing my beloved. I had a spot of poison oak just behind my knees and the sweat tickled it as it found its course down the river of my legs. I don't mind these memories as it was in part that sweat trickle that helped keep me present. I remember being in our ceremony, there, with Brent, connected to the profundity of what we were doing, and awake. The heat, the sweat, the mild discomforts were welcome then as they are now. Our wedding, like our marriage, did not aim for perfection and elimination of the Shadow. Instead we have used difficulty to deepen, grow, and continually use our marriage as an alchemical vessel for ever evolving transformation. It certainly hasn't always been pretty!

And... the aspect of our wedding ceremony that has had the biggest and most obvious contribution to our marriage has to be our vows. We spent a long time working on our vows, crafting them to be ever lasting in their significance and power. They are not particularly pretty nor dressed up in white light, rather they are raw, true, and aspirational in their difficulty to live! We hold our vows as intentions for our marriage, the container for our relationship and our commitments to one another. We fail at them often, we measure our contributions against each other, forget to hold open the possibility of another truth, and get pissed when our spiritual journey gets in the way of practical living. When we remember to, we use our vows to redirect us back to what we hold to be most important.

Marriage is not an easy path. I'm immensely grateful Brent and I decided to take the step that involved ritualizing the relationship we already had. Meaningful ritual has held our relationship through the high points and been the glue during the difficult ones. It has sometimes felt far worse than sweat tickling poison oak, challenge that has helped me stay present even if I want to run. Staying with and exploring the shadowy parts of our relationship even when we don't want to...that practice has roots in our vows.

We may celebrate the day of our first date, but our wedding day marked the moment the alchemical process of transformation was truly placed over the fire of change. Anyone there on that mountain top can attest to the heat.