Feels like my world is filled with cliches right about now.  How time ended up going so fast, how she grew up too quickly, how did we get here.  The nest won’t be empty due to the pandemic – but life will also never quite be the same.  There is nothing like a daughter and I have been blessed beyond measure with mine.

Will my child have friends?

Will she be ready for kindergarten?

Does she know her letters?

How about her colors?

Is she having enough playdates? (Seems like everyone is having playdates.)

And what should we do to celebrate her birthday? And, oh yes, the goody bags!

We all do it. We all worry about our children.Whether its about friends, or learning, or getting ready for something else. We want to do this parenting thing right.  They are our hearts living outside our bodies and the responsibility we feel is heavy.

Here is my simple message for you: BE HERE NOW.

Don’t spend your energy on something else that is coming later. Don’t worry about later now. Later will be different if your child grows up with a parent who is present in her life now. Later will be different if your child grows up with a parent who is not present in her life now.

Put down your phone. Unless it is an emergency having to do with your other child, your partner, your brother, or an emergency. Just put it down.

What could be more important than giving your full attention to those you love? Especially at the meal table.  Stop looking down to check email or twitter or instagram or your feed of whatever. It can wait.  Even an email from me. You are modeling behavior to your child that they are less important. Less deserving. You are also modeling  relationship and they will emulate your behavior later. They see everything that you do. Make sure that they know they are deserving of your time. Your attention. Your presence. Be with them when you are with them.

Be direct.  Be a parent.  Not everything is a negotiation.  Not everything is a question. Somethings are for safety.  You need to hold their hand in parking lots.  A child running across a parking lot into the path of a car that is backing up is not asserting his independence and you are not empowering him.  Hold his hand.

And lastly. I have written about this in the past. The importance of happiness. I do not think it can be overstated. Having older children now, I have a longer view of childhood and I see where it is going. And all I can tell you is this. Unless your child has a significant developmental need, they are all going to learn how to read, how to be a friend, and how to survive their schooling. They will know their letters and colors.  They will fall in love. They will be hurt and they will find their passion.  If they want to, they will go to college. If they want to, they will dance or play sports, or debate, or play the violin. But what they need to get there is the simplest thing in the world. It isn’t extra enrichment classes or playdates – it is your LOVE AND ACCEPTANCE. LOVE AND ACCEPTANCE. For who they are. Right now.

So, hug, touch, say it.  All they need is love.

This is the time of year for Happy. Happy New Year! Wishing you a…happy…new…year. Happy.

I spend time thinking about happy. Being happy. My own happiness and that of my children. Happiness. Because without it – there really is not much else. Without a sense of peace and calm and happy, no matter what one has done or the size of a bank account, or the accomplishments of a career – it all amounts to really nothing. Happiness. That is the goal.

And yet, it is easy to forget. We can get caught up in preparations and planning – whether for social reasons or achievement. How many of us deliberately contemplate play dates or registrations or Hayden or soccer or dance or math – just to be sure we are creating and cultivating of a child that is prepared for the next level. Of friendship. Of school. Of athletics. Of success.

I know. I was there. Too.

But it leaves out an important element. Their happiness. And that is the one element that is most vital to their life and their well-being.

When children are young – they only know what you create for them. Their world is all yours to control. You control their happy. What they do; where they go; what they eat; who they see. It is all on you. The decisions you make. The priorities you set.

And so this is what I know now – as a parent of three very large teenagers and a twenty year old. Happiness is the most important goal of all. Not how early they read or how well they can solve math problems or how complex the lego model is that they just created or which Harry Potter book they just finished. It really is so simple. Prioritize happy above all else. It really does not matter if they are going to a great college if they are unhappy. And a parent can only be as happy as their most unhappy child. Take my word for it; they will all get there – just make sure you care more about their happy than you do about anything else.

Prioritizing happy does not mean giving them everything they want; it does not mean rewards; it does not mean playdates; it does not mean wish fulfillment; it does not mean ‘yes’ to everything they ask for or of you.

Prioritizing happy means: a consistent routine and home life; it means unconditional love; it means predictability; it means honesty; it means time and space within boundaries; it means naps in the middle of the day; it means slowing down and it means family dinners. It means playing or doing for fun and not because you think you ought to; it means playdates that are natural and like breathing; not something that needs to be scheduled or forced or created just so you feel like you are tending to their yet to be developed social needs.

Happy New Year. To you. And while you are thinking so much about your child’s happiness. Please, most of all – remember this: your happiness is just as important. Without your happiness and peace, nothing else can really happen. Your children know you better than you think and most of all, they feel you. All the time. They know your happy and they know your sad. And it all flows from there. So tend to yourself. Whatever that means for you. I speak from experience. If you neglect to take care of yourself, it will catch up with you.

“What I like doing best is Nothing.”

“How do you do Nothing,” asked Pooh after he had wondered for a long time.

“Well, it’s when people call out at you just as you’re going off to do it, ‘What are you going to do, Christopher Robin?’ and you say, ‘Oh, Nothing,’ and then you go and do it.

It means just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”

“Oh!” said Pooh.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

I recently read something that struck my sensibility about parenting to the core.  It was an essay written about parenting teenagers – but it made so much sense regarding the parenting of preschoolers, too.  (ntmoms.com/letter-teenager-cant-write/)

Parenting is at best challenging and at worst the hardest thing we have ever done.  The metaphor in the article cited above is a really good one. As parents, we are holding on to the other end of the rope.  Your child will pull, and twist, and swirl and pull and even try to pull it away as she swirls.  It is our job to hold on.  To be their anchor – even, and especially, when it takes all our strength to do so.

I know this so very well as the mother of four teenagers.  Its so hard when they are little – but it’s so very scary and even sometimes harder when they get bigger.  You hope that they will make the best decisions and you pray that they will stay safe – and you are so grateful when everyone is back home and tucked into their beds.  But holding on to the rope is essential and exhausting – and it all started back when they were three feet tall.

Preschoolers and teenagers need to flail.  They need to know where the edges are. It’s how they stay grounded and feel safe.  It’s how they know they are loved. However it is hard- especially when they are young.  We want them to be independent.  We want to nurture their strength and sense of the world.  It gets tricky to know when to say no; when to say stop.

We all want our children to be self-actualized operators in this great big world of ours.  We all want them to be strong and independent – resilient – we want as parents to nurture and cultivate those attributes.  Stopping their urges, not fulfilling their requests – its exhausting. But it is ESSENTIAL.  Hold on to the rope.  Keep them grounded. It is the only way and it is what they are asking for – the whole entire time.

I say to you – as someone who struggles with this – to remember to hold on to the rope. Hold on.  Hold them in – don’t really let them go;  they need to know where to find the ground.  Love them all the time.  And they will become that self-actualized human being that you want for them.  If you let go and just let them flail out in the world – the unravelling can leave them lost.

This past year has been a year of change, upheaval, new beginnings and mourning – so in this season of thanksgiving, I took a little time to list out some top ten lists of what has sustained me through this past year.

We all have our comforts and supports –  what we do, who we listen to, and who we read. I took some time to list out (not necessarily in order) what those have been for me in this past year.  It made me realize that despite ups and downs of living and being – that I live a life of opportunity and resources; I am incredibly fortunate.

Of course what really gets anyone of us through hard times are those who we surround ourselves with – for me I have been blessed with incredible brothers, sisters, and four amazing children.  And, I would be nowhere without my incredible friends or the irrepressible, Casey.

Beauty surrounds us.  Find your path.  Take time to realize all that you have.

In Thanksgiving:

1. Conservation Land
2. Running Sneakers
3. Bike
4. Oil paint
5. Back porch
6. Walden
7. Turntable & Vinyl
8. Maine
9. Hoop
10. Yoga

1. Adele
2. Nathaniel Ratecliff & the Night Sweats
3. Bon Iver
4. Edith Pilaf
5. Mumford & Sons
6. The Hunts
7. Mary Lambert
8. Sara Bareilles
9. Bach
10. Yo-Yo Ma

1. e.e. cummings
2. Thich Nhat Hahn
3. Tyler Knott Gregson
4. Mary Oliver
5. Elizabeth Gilbert
6. Maya Angelou
7. Emily Dickinson
8. Winnie-the-Pooh
9. Fred Rogers
10. Pablo Neruda

 “It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” 

― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

I recently moved to Belmont.

In exploring my new neighborhood this summer, I stepped into a bakery a couple blocks from my apartment. Ohlins. A friend was coming over for coffee that morning and I thought it would be nice to have some muffins to share.

Ohlins has a somewhat dingy store front – handwritten signs yellowed with curled edges. Inside, old time bakery cases are trimmed with an array of Green Mountain coffee options. In the cases, the variety of doughnuts is plentiful and right there in that shop on that morning, I spontaneously decided to skip the muffins and opt for the a jelly dipped instead.

I ate one on the walk back – and I was transformed. With the first bite, I was brought back to my childhood when all doughnuts tasted just like that. Pure. And good. Not just good – deliciously good. With no aftertaste – no weird slippery feeling on the top of my mouth like when I eat a Dunkin Donut – this was just a good delicious sweet treat.

And I realized something on that street corner. That doughnut was REAL. No chemicals. No preservatives. Made that morning.

It really made me consider that while I was enjoying those purely delightful calories that would do nothing for my body but give me a sugar rush and more fat to burn off – I realized that I wasn’t ingesting any chemicals. And how is it that our food system has become so corrupt that buying a real doughnut felt like a new experience? A novelty. Something my own teenaged children have yet to experience.

It is hard to find REAL this days. It is hard to sustain conversations without having someone check their phone or hear a text alert beep.  We are so distracted and our attentions split between before, now, and what’s next. It is hard to demand REAL. We live in a fast food cheaply constructed consumer driven world where there is very little REAL. We live in a world where it is cheaper to buy a new oven then get your few years old oven fixed.

As part of my move to Belmont, an old family bed came up to Long Island to furnish my bedroom. My brother graciously drove it up for me arriving one Saturday morning. I had been moving stuff into my apartment all morning – but when that bed arrived – something else happened. I couldn’t lift it myself. Not one piece of it. And I consider myself reasonably fit and strong. But there was no moving or even putting that bed together by myself. It was heavy. Made of REAL wood. Nothing like the stuff I had recently purchased – not even close.

I know there are so many new inventions and advances that make our lives better today then what life was like for my parents – or their parents. But what have we lost?

We have to become more aware of what is REAL in our lives. So that we don’t miss our own opportunities to be REAL and we recognize when there is REAL. To be present. To fully love. To be aware of what is distracting from this present moment. To eat REAL food. To appreciate the weight of REAL wood. To stop and smell REAL roses.

Be aware of what is REAL. Because with real ingredients in your life, everything tastes so much better.

As my time went on at Swarthmore, I came to understand it quite clearly.  There was the guilt that we all walked around with any minute that we weren’t studying or on our way to studying. The workload was crazy and too much and there was never enough time to do it all.  My time there acquainted me with those feelings of constant worry that I wasn’t doing enough, and yes, guilt.  (And it was also true that there was not much sex either.)

Fast forward to becoming a parent.

Guilt is a very pervasive emotion. It accompanies so many moments after our children are born.  Every phase of their childhood provides us with multiple opportunities to feel guilty.

They aren’t having enough play dates.
I shouldn’t take them to McDonalds.
They watch too much TV.
I shouldn’t leave them with a sitter to go work out.
I shouldn’t buy them another plastic toy just to get through this shopping trip.
I am too hard on them.
I am too easy on them.
I should really be only feeding them organic produce.
I really shouldn’t be using screen time as a reward.
Oh, why do I love that the iPad can keep them so busy for so long?
Am I doing enough?

There is that circular internal conversation loop that we all play.  It comes from the best of intentions.  It comes from caring and loving and wanting the best for our children.

But I have come to a place of recognizing it and realizing that there is no need for that kind of guilt.  It serves no useful purpose.  And it drives us crazy. It creates an atmosphere of clouds and worry around all the love that we are desperately trying to give to our children.  It doesn’t make us better parents.  It makes us anxious parents.  And anxious, worried, “am I doing enough?” parents are not allowing themselves to just be in the flow of living.

The “Mindfulness” movement is something that is ancient – so to call it a new idea or a ‘movement’ is very silly.  However, it has gotten a lot of recent attention and within our current cloud of parenting resources, it comes up a lot.  And I like it.  A lot.  The concept of slowing down and breathing is exactly right.  It takes us out of our self-talk and doubt – and even guilt.  It brings us to the present.  To the now.  That’s where life happens. And if you practice it, the guilt has a way of floating on. Away.  Where it belongs.

Guilt doesn’t make us better parents. It only makes us second guess ourselves and regret decisions that we have already made.  Don’t allow guilt to take away this moment.  You are here.  Doing your best. That’s what makes you a good parent. The caring.  The awareness. Feel the confidence in that.  And just remember this, when it starts to unravel and guilt works its way in (and I know that it will despite all intentions), breathe.  Just breathe.

And remember, that all they need is love.

On December 9th, I grabbed a rebound, turned up court to run the break, and I fell down. My Achilles tendon, long nursed through bouts of tendonitis and many sore runs, just gave out.

Since that time, I have been limited physically – have spent two weeks on bed rest – and have had to completely slow down and take that very deep proverbial breath.

Many people who know me have commented as to this must have been so very hard for me to do. I live an active lifestyle: whether training for a new race, swimming across the pond, coaching a team through a practice, or trying to keep up with my children.  All of that had to stop.

And something magical happened.

Community happened.
Friends happened.
Life happened.

Meals began to arrive.  Friends dropped in and sat on my bed with me and spent hours just chatting and catching up.  Some friends that I hadn’t seen in over a year.  A year. There was so much to say, share, tell, and think about.

My children – who are constantly hungry – were sustained by the daily meals being delivered (still being delivered).  But on a more important level – much more – they have been witness to “Community”.  To an outpouring of love and meals and help – and so they are experiencing firsthand what it means for us to take care of each other.

It is perhaps one of the most important life lessons that we can teach them.  For wherever they go on in this life – no matter what happens to their friends or extended family, they will know what to do; how to help.  They will remember.

Thank you all for this lesson.  I could never have done it without you.

Every parent wants their child to grow up and know how important it is to care for their neighbor, their friend, the person in their community that needs help. But how to teach that?

I don’t wish a ruptured Achilles tendon on anyone.  It hurt a lot – and so did the surgery.  But I do wish that all of our collective children experience “Community”.  I like to think they get a little taste of this at CNS through daily parent helping.  Your child’s special day is special – but it also is giving every child a message that their classroom is an important place to be. Important enough to shift your schedule, take a personal day, or find a sitter for a younger sibling.

To nourish each other is something incredibly special and can take on so many forms. Thank you all for nourishing me and my family through these days of recovery.  I promise to pay it forward – and who knows, maybe one of my kids will even cook dinner for you one day?

In this season of giving and getting…in this season of shopping and shipping and lists…I have just one simple bit of advice for parents of young children that I wish someone had told me.

Here’s the thing.  When my children were young, it was easy to satisfy their wants.  It was relatively easy to cross off all the items they had listed.  Trips to Toys R Us, the Lego Store, Pottery Barn Kids…and we were done.  Nothing better than a credit card around the holidays.

I think I felt such gratification over making all their dreams come true.  Of making them feel so incredibly special and loved.  But I got a little lost in it.  And for a number of years – maybe the first ten of being a parent, it became almost like a game to win.  Chasing after those next great thing that they wanted – stretching ourselves probably too thin – just to make that Christmas morning so perfect.

And what I learned is this:  the bar kept getting higher.  And the after holiday bills always bigger – so much so that the year end bonus instead of giving us a head start on a new year, went to paying off one morning in December.

By the time my children got to middle school – their wants and desires started to cross lines that I wasn’t willing to cross – that crazy Bad Theft Auto game and those really scary bloody war Xbox games.  And here’s the thing – up until that point, they had almost always gotten what they wanted…but now ‘what’ they wanted wasn’t something I was willing to have in the house – and the cost of all of these items just got so incredibly crazy.  It wasn’t sustainable.  But we had set the bar.  We had made Christmas all about all that stuff – all about those lists being crossed off…we had done that.

And then.  It stopped.  It had too.  And I felt foolish.  But all of a sudden, there I was trying to dream up what was going to get to make my son happy.  I knew I couldn’t get him that iPad on his list – so what was going to substitute?  And there I was looking for something and realizing – how no “thing” should never be what it is all about.  And that we never should have made it about the stuff.  They would have been so happy with less.  They would have been fine.  It didn’t make us good parents to fill the under the tree.  It made us just blind and unconscious parents getting that one more piece of plastic for our family room.  And it taught them that by buying or getting stuff, they will feel loved and that they were ‘good’.

And so now Christmas is very different at my house.  No more lists. And the gifts are simple.  Functional.  Stuff that they need.  And maybe a very little simple something else- usually small enough to fit in their stocking.  It was a transition.  And we talked about it.  And guess what – they were fine.  And now the bills after Christmas make sense.  And the credit card debt doesn’t exist.  And my kids…they are just happy to be together.  They just want the bacon and the together – warmth.  Family.  That’s really all we need.

So don’t do what I did – don’t think your job as a parent is to fulfill every dream with ‘stuff’. Don’t try to fill up that tree and blow their little mind with the resourcefulness of Santa.  Keep it simple.  Beautiful.  They really don’t need the latest video game or game system. Set different priorities – and stick to it – regardless of their list, their friends, your credit limit or your bank account.

There is no judgment here.  Just a sharing and a desire to pass along a little bit of wisdom that I wish someone had shared with me.

Happy Holidays.