Here’s a much more lighthearted telling of an experience with my teens that models “intentional but imperfect” parenting that I’m hoping you’ll see a bit of your own family in. We’re all just doing the best we can with our current understanding of what’s happening in our lives. I reference the pieces Coming Home and Grant Me the Serenity and think this reflection demonstrates what I refer to as “the work” of creating reframing practices that have helped strengthen and keep my family close.
Here’s the transcript of the reflection I read in the podcast:
Road Trip: Day One
Earbuds. Are they evil? I don’t believe in evil, and I absolutely love the magic of earbuds, but damn if they don’t cause serious problems for me.
Traveling with my two teens—one is 15, the other 12. So I guess, technically a teen and a tween? Just the three of us; hubby is saving his time off for a vacay this fall. We three roadtripped from our home in (undisclosed location in the NW part of the United States) to Southern California to spend some quality time with our good friends that my kids have always known.
Yes, it’s a ways, but not a new trip to us. Sometimes we do this trip several times a year, so the scenery, while beautiful, is not novel. I actually really love roadtrips because I am a huge consumer of auditory content and I currently have 4+ books I’m eager to get through. And I like the scenery, regardless of how many times I’ve driven the route.
The kids are not impressed with the scenery. They also like to plug into their own content on the road. So to an insect or an alien, it would look really quiet in the car for most of the trip. Three humans with little cords attached to buds shoved in their ears making occasional facial expressions, all in the same car, but each in her/his own world.
Usually, we stop, both directions, in Salt Lake City and spend the night with family I have there. This makes it an official road trip, right? I have two sisters and two brothers-in-law, and my kids have eight cousins just south of SLC; we stay well-connected because of their strategic placement on this oft traveled path of ours.
Sometimes this trip goes better than others. It definitely helps when I am proactive and arrange some limits on the solitary world approach—let’s figure out some things we can do in the car together, unplugged from our individual devices. I do try this time, but the kids are resisting. Even though I specifically chose some Audible books that I thought they could also enjoy, no one is playing along, and I don’t want to fight the battle.
This was a last minute trip, and I decided to use some hotel points to get us all the way to St. George on Day One, so we wouldn’t have to drive through the deep desert heat all day on our second day of driving. I recognize early on I should have fought the battle. I know the consequences, but I get lazy. And like I mentioned, I was excited about the opportunity to binge-listen. This is the real battle. Fighting my own desire to listen to what I want to listen to vs. finding something we can agree to consume together.
We were a wreck when we reached St. George after a 9-hour car ride of—hmm, what to call it—shared solitude? That sounds so lovely, but even as it was happening, I knew I’d pay for it later. I did thoroughly enjoy every moment I spent listening to a long segment of The Coddling of the American Mind and then the first 10 or so chapters of Where the Crawdads Sing.
The kids didn’t fight about who would sit where. In fact, my daughter stays up most the night before road trips so she can sleep in the car and she was perfectly happy with the back seat. The boy up front next to me—he and I do more roadtripping together and are pretty used to finding a rhythm with just the two of us. When his sister is in the car though, he’s less agreeable. I think he wants to impress her with his own rebelliousness, so on this trip, he shifts into his need to give me pointers on how to drive. He does this sometimes, and it’s not endearing.
Every time we had to emerge from our own worlds, there was tension. Why do they look for every reason to be mean to each other? I am lamely reminding them that assuming best intentions and treating others with kindness will help them be happier people, but who wants unsolicited advice?
I can feel myself becoming reactive and not having the will to shift into the kindness I want to model for them. I try a few times to get them to listen to the book with me; it’s not happening. I capitulate to the earbuds every time. I lack the energy to fight the battle, but even more, I lack interest in the content they’d be willing to share with me.
At the hotel, we are all beyond snippy with each other. We do all manage to agree on pizza, and I leave them in the room (for some real solitude?) to go pick it up. I don’t listen to my book on this short car trip, but instead strategize for how to shift the energy. When I get back to the hotel, I buy a rather large cookie at the food counter that I know they’ll both like. Upstairs, we eat pizza, and they express enthusiasm and appreciation for the cookie that we all split. We go over the receipts for the day to determine how we did with our trip budget then watch Episode 3 of Good Omens on my laptop—together. We laugh together, we pause and discuss scenes with each other. We enjoy the content together. We retire to bed in much better spirits than we arrived at the hotel.
Tomorrow’s another day. I remind myself of something I say often to my husband, “you’ll never regret the time you spend with your kids.” I resolve to fight the battle.
Road Trip: Day Two
The Next Morning…
Only the boy joined me for the free (and quite good) hotel breakfast, and he didn’t eat much. A bowl of cereal (we don’t buy cereal at home so he eats it whenever it’s available) along with a yogurt. When he opened the yogurt, the whey spilled out onto his shorts and he left me (and the offensive yogurt) to go back up to the room and change.
The girl preferred to sleep than to eat. Everyone knew I wanted to hit the road early so we could make this last five hours of the trip before the heat hit triple digits. Once I returned from breakfast with the luggage cart, we (I) packed quickly and loaded the cart. The kids were at each other again the moment I woke the teen, and again, my responses were more reactive than measured and calm. I hurriedly scanned the room to make sure we weren’t leaving anything behind, feeling helpless to enlist any quality assistance from my kids.
They waited at the hotel entrance with the luggage cart (her hissing at him through clenched teeth to “Stop!” playing his ukulele) while I went to get the car and pull it around to load. I popped the hatch to set something down and realized the girl was at my side having abandoned her uke-playing brother to guard the cart on his own. I hit the button on the hatch door to close it and just as it latched shut, I uttered a desperate, “Noooo!” and put both my hands on the window.
I peered in through the hatch window and just as I feared, spotted my keys sitting there amid the few stray items we’d left in the car overnight. I tried the handle, hoping I’d unlocked the whole car and just didn’t remember. I hadn’t. I checked all the doors just to confirm what I already knew. I could feel the temper tantrum boiling up and out of me, ready to curse and stomp my feet, and then I thought of my girl, standing there at my side, absorbing my energy, more than ready to tantrum with me and miraculously, I pulled it together.
Funny, as I write these posts sometimes, I try to assess myself as a parent from the reader’s point of view, and I’m often disgusted. I have to say, these last couple years of parenting have really done a number on my ego. I realize how much I judged other parents. I am someone who’s spent years consciously developing myself as a person, moving through growth philosophies, putting in the effort to adopt practices of gratitude and self-care, and consistently being able to shift my lens and reframe a situation. But I’m telling you, parenting wears a person down. It reduces me to my pre-growth self more often than I like to admit.
We hadn’t used our AAA membership in years, and I didn’t have a card in my wallet. I panicked on the inside briefly as I tried to remember if we still maintained that membership. I called my husband who assured me we were still covered and who texted me the needed info. I placed the call, then calmly, even pleasantly, let the kids know the wait would take “only” 45 minutes at the most. The boy went back up to the room, and the girl stayed in the lobby with me.
Feeling true relief at how easy it was to remedy what initially seemed like a disaster, I cheerfully acknowledged this out loud to my daughter while she sipped the glass of grapefruit juice I’d fetched for her from the breakfast buffet. Her energy shifted along with mine (albeit briefly) and she even helped her brother pick up the thirty or so round, bouncy ammo balls that spilled from his Nerf gun when he pulled it out of the recently unlocked hatch (Love AAA!!) to make room for the luggage. He didn’t think it was funny, but it was hard not to laugh as the little yellow balls bounced all over and in every direction of the covered entrance to the hotel. We eventually retrieved every ball.
Once in the car and on the road, when I held out my hand and demanded their earbuds, the cranky resistance returned. You’ll recall from the previous day that I had resolved to “fight this battle.” This day I could reframe it as “hold this boundary.” I mean, really, are the war metaphors really helpful?! I offered several alternatives to isolated listening including all of us sharing a podcast of their choice, but the girl continued to resist for the first two hours. Her brother and I visited quietly while she tried to sleep. Eventually, after she finally decided to grab a bite to eat (Whew!), she suggested a podcast.
Both the kids have been listening to this Dungeons & Dragons podcast on their own; she’s completely caught up on the latest campaign, but we jumped in where her brother is in the episode sequence, near the end of the first campaign. I had to be filled in on lots of back story and it took me almost two hour-long episodes to feel like I had a clue what was happening, but I did eventually find myself caught up in the plotline. So much so that we had to circle a bit after arriving to our ultimate destination so that we could finish a compelling story arc as we wrapped up this part of our road trip.
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