Tag Archives: Ryan

Our Plan B Life

Parenting for Pearls

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Me and my parenting coach, Ryan (aka Butter — that’s a story for another day).

I made a new friend this winter. Sure, he’s a fantastic chef, and super handy, and says “yes” to every adventure, but the thing I most admire about Ryan is his parenting.

His boys (ages 10 and 12 when I met them) are polite. They can survive a six-hour road trip without an electronic device. The eldest makes bacon & eggs breakfasts for the family.

I know a Super Hero when I see one, and Ryan is a Super Dad. Sure, he has his off days, but in general he’s rocking this parenting thing and I asked him to teach me his secrets.

Lesson 1: Parenting is a Choice

At some point, we have to choose to parent. Not just to procreate, but to accept our role as a parent whose job it is to prepare our kid(s) for their own adult lives.

It’s hard to make this choice. Partly because many of us don’t realize it is a choice. We think: of course we’re “parenting,” we’ve been “parenting” since that first diaper. But no. There’s a point when we switch tracks, from survival mode (“please stop crying”) to parenting (“here’s how to wash your clothes”).

It’s also hard to actively “parent” because it takes effort. Parenting is the last thing a mom or dad wants to do when they get home from work at the end of the day. It’s so easy to NOT parent. In order to give our kids the parenting they need and crave, we have to choose (yet again) to put our own needs second and our kids first.

Super Dad Ryan made this choice. After a series of “wake up” moments, he chose to be a dad to his kids. He stopped outsourcing them at every available opportunity, and changed his focus from his own rowdy adventures to creating quality family time with his boys.

In the early days of our friendship I asked Ryan how mealtimes work at his house. Specifically: “Do you eat meals together?”

Not only do they eat together at the table, they also cook and wash up together. The boys ask to be excused, then clear the plates. They play cards or backgammon or crib after dinner. They have conversations.

I read Ryan’s texted response and then looked up at my own son, plugged into his iPad and Pokemon headphones, watching YouTube cartoons while he ate his breakfast, and realized I’d been lazy.

I was still in survival mode, after those infant/toddler years, and the years of Brock’s cancer, and then our move, and then building our house … “family meals” hadn’t been a priority. But if our mealtime habits were going to change, it was up to me as the adult, the parent, to change it.

Lesson 2: Be the Grit

Somewhere along the way, I picked up this idea that a parent’s job is to make life easier for their kids.

When our kids are babies, we take care of them. We anticipate their needs and try to give them what they want, mostly to prevent or stop the crying.

But some of us don’t stop being the WD-40 in our children’s lives. We continue to make their appointments, chauffeur them around, manage their interpersonal conflicts and play servant to them by feeding, cleaning up after, grooming and sheltering these Little Emperors.

In part, again, we do this because it’s easier. It’s easier to just pick up the dirty clothes. It’s easier to watch Netflix while making dinner, rather than try to make conversation with a pre-teen, much less get them to prep the salad.

But if we parents don’t teach our kids these very basic life skills, who will?

Ryan takes this even further: our job is not to make life easier for our kids, it’s actually to make it harder.

It’s our job as parents to introduce challenge and conflict into our kids’ lives, at a very early age, so that they can learn (in a safe place, with a safe, loving adult) how to overcome challenges and manage conflict.

Ryan dropped this particular pearl of wisdom while we were having lunch one day, and then he reached out and took my mug of tea.

HEATHER: “That’s my tea.”

(I was ready to fight for it.)

RYAN: “So that’s where he gets it.”

Our job as parents is to TAKE the favourite toy, so that the kid can figure out how to get it back without resorting to violence. We’re right there beside them, to model good problem solving and coach them along the way.

Our job is to NOT follow the kindergartener’s precise instructions as to how to build that sandcastle, so that they can practice patience and be open to friends playing in different ways.

Introducing conflict into my son’s life felt weird at first, but it’s actually way more fun than obediently doing what he commands.

Isaac carried his own adventure backpack on an 8km hike this spring. No assistance. He filled it with rocks and still finished strong.

Lesson 3: Do it for Yourself

Sure, being an active parent will (you hope) give you great adult kids. But there’s a short-term benefit to all of this too: self-respect.

Being a parent rather than an enabler is good for your own sense of self-worth.

Super Dad Ryan realized one day that his kids were staring at their devices while he was making their school lunches. He felt like a servant, and alarm bells rang. Knife down: no more of that nonsense.

He figured that if the boys had the leisure time to watch mindless pap on the Internet, they had the time to make their own sandwiches. His rule now is: no devices until after breakfast and lunches are done. He still makes their lunches most of the time, but he also gets some conversation time with his kids while he mayos bread.

I have more examples of this … Ryan and his ex-wife sleep-trained their boys early on, because adult evening time mattered to them. He taught his eldest to make eggs years ago, and cleaned egg gunk off the stovetop many, many times, but now gets served perfect eggs and bacon breakfasts. (Jaxson even butters the toast.) Ryan’s taught his kids manners, knife skills, design and construction, laundry, vacuuming and more, which has made them enjoyable, confident kids and capable future adults.

Teaching basic manners is a start. It’s soul-sucking and demeaning to be ordered around by your child. You deserve to be asked for something politely (“please”) and thanked for your effort.

Permission to Try

It’s always hard to veer from your set path. Maybe your kid is older, or you have an extra-tiring job, or there are some other extenuating circumstances and “parenting” just sounds like too much work right now.

My son ate his breakfast this morning at the counter, plugged into his iPad and Pokemon headphones, watching YouTube cartoons.

The first cup of tea Isaac ever brought me in bed.

But we eat dinner together at the table most days, and have conversations. I’ve taught Isaac how to make me tea. Sometimes he brings it to me in bed.

And when he struggles to get his jacket on, I force myself to keep my hands in my pockets because he will always, eventually, figure it out without my help.

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Our Plan B Life

Home for a Rest

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In the months after Brock died, when I was busy packing up our stuff to move to Invermere, I wondered if I was missing my opportunity to grieve. I was worried that I would reach Invermere and settle in here to our new (Plan B) life, and be so busy finding us a house and making friends and re-creating Isaac’s active lifestyle that I would just move on to the post-Brock chapter of our life, without ever properly working through the trauma and sadness of losing him.

Instead, I am relieved to find that the numbness I’ve felt since September 21 is finally thawing.

I think I can finally be sad because I’m no longer trying to put on a brave face for the people around me. In Duncan, I was mourning along with Brock’s friends and family, as well as his childhood teachers, fellow volunteers, once-colleagues, farm customers, etc. I can’t help myself — I’ve always needed to “silver-line” other people’s negative emotions, for some reason (I think I just made up a new verb, but that’s the best word I can think of). And so when someone expressed sympathy for me I would (usually) automatically try to comfort them or downplay my own grief.

Many people here in small-town Invermere know about Brock’s death, and have given me their hugs and condolences, but they didn’t know Brock. I can just be sad and accept their sympathy without feeling the need to comfort them.

I’m also finally in a situation where I don’t have to be strong for Isaac. He happily spends entire days away from me, with my sister and mom. I don’t have to be “on” all the time for him.

I read an essay in The Walrus the other day, written by a man (Paul Adams) who lost his wife to cancer four years after her diagnosis. They’d accepted it was terminal, too. He wrote this articulate bit:

“We all come to cancer with the emotional, psychological, and spiritual resources we have, and we use them up. We use them all up.”

I think my friend Maeve was right: I am exhausted. I gave everything I had these past few years. My head has felt full of cotton for months. I remember being a “high-functioning” (as Ryan would say) person, able to multi-task and tackle errands efficiently. I hope that I will be that clear-headed again someday. But these days I am barely a safe driver. In Invermere I have the excuse of being out-of-practice driving on snow and ice, and usually relinquish the wheel of my car to whomever else I’m traveling with. But it’s not just the big horn sheep and black ice that make me unsafe. I can’t maintain focus. I often awake from little “black out” moments of distraction.

I am learning that grief is like sailing through an ocean of icebergs. It isn’t one single thought or memory that makes me sad. There are dozens of things to grieve. I relive Brock’s last four days, including the moment when he stopped breathing and died. I remember our conversations, how funny and unexpected he could be. I mourn the loss of our farm, and Brock’s energy. I think about the future we wanted and should have had. Brock should be here teaching Isaac to skate and ski. Brock should be binge-watching season 2 of The Crown with me until 1am.

It’s bizarre that I’m finally able to be sad here, when otherwise I feel so at home, and happy to be back in the East Kootenays.

There is a bereavement support group in Invermere and I’ve signed up for the next session, which should start at the end of January. A family friend, who lost his wife this year, is halfway through the last session and he says there is a workbook. I love that there’s a workbook. Because it’s work, and because we humans are all so essentially the same, and because a workbook has a start and an end, with steps to follow, and that seems healthier than just sitting around with other grieving people, talking about how sad we are, with no path forward.

A 2053 Perspective

A mental exercise that intrigues me these days … I wonder how Isaac will tell the story of his life when he’s an adult. Say, 40 years old. “My dad died of cancer, and then we moved to Invermere, and my mom …”

What did I do next? Did I make good choices? Were we financially okay? Did we stay cuddle-close or drift apart as he approached his teen years? Was I a good role model and support to Isaac for dealing with his dad’s death? What will he remember, and what will scar him?

It’s mind-bending to see our present reality through that big-picture lens. It’s weird to be the “widowed, single mom” in someone else’s life story.