I’ve been middle aged since I was a kid. I’m not sure why. I guess partially due to temperament and partially due to birth order. To my bat mitzvah party, I wore a woman’s structured black suit with shoulder pads and sensible heels, looking like a tiny executive rather than a 13-year old. I read Agatha Christie mysteries instead of listening to Top 40 radio. I got married and had kids young — most of peers were still dancing the night away in clubs while I was home sleep training my babies. My old soul has always been a mismatch with my chronological age. But now, I am finally turning 50.

“Age is just a number” people say about getting older, mostly in an effort to make peace with aging. But for me, age truly is just a number because the actual number has just never been relevant to who I am. To bring this home, in the past year I had both my hips replaced due to severe osteoarthritis. Everyone kept saying to me: “But aren’t you too young for that?” I literally never asked myself that question. Having hip replacements decades before most people made do perfect sense to me — I’ve always been on an alternate timeline.

Be the architect of your joy

And while I don’t typically give my age much thought, I’ve actually spent all year considering how to celebrate my 50th birthday. Because if the last four decades have taught me anything, it’s that you should never miss an opportunity to mark a milestone, yours or someone else’s. The specific number I’m turning doesn’t matter to me, but grabbing life by both hands, that does.

It’s a slightly weird birthday because I’ve known for a year that my husband would not be home to celebrate with me. He’s crosscrossing the country covering the World Cup this summer. My 50th birthday, our daughter’s 18th birthday, and our youngest son’s 16th birthday, all fall within the first wildly intense first week of the tournament. Knowing that he wouldn’t be here with me actually illuminated the first of a two life lessons I’m carrying into this (God willing) second half of my life: No one else is going to plan your joy for you. You need to be the architect of your own joy and invite people along to help you build it. So I’ve made plans throughout the summer to celebrate with family and friends around the country. I didn’t wait for people to read my mind to decipher what I wanted. I didn’t wallow that my birthday wasn’t going to be picture perfect. I took control of my destiny by figuring out the things that would fill me with happiness and then asked for help to make them happen.

Don’t forget to ask yourself what you want

I have spent the last decade wanting to write a book. Three years ago Cara Natterson and I wrote This Is So Awkward together and it’s work I’m incredibly proud of. But I knew that I had another book in me, one that expresses my singular voice. So I used turning 50 as a deadline to motivate me to write my next one. (Stayed tuned for Teenhood: Confessions & Lessons from the Trickiest Phase of Parenting coming January 2027.)

In truth, this book is symbolic of something bigger I’ve been thinking a lot about and discussing with friends: What do I want? I had a therapist ask me this recently and I looked at her in confusion. “What do you mean? I never ask myself what I want. I ask: What do my children want? What does my husband want?” Those of us who’ve spend decades devoting our lives to our spouses and children have the imperative to figure out we want for ourselves. The answer doesn’t come right away and putting it into action takes longer, even a decade’s worth of time in my case. But we all deserve to start by asking the question and seeing what bubbles up in response.

So for my birthday, to show I’m learning from my own lessons, I’m taking the day off from work to celebrate my actual age catching up with my old soul.

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This weekend, I was in the car with my 10-year-old, the philosopher of the family, and he said, “Mom, I feel bad for you because in your mind you’re always wondering, am I being a good parent or not?” I swear that kid can read my mind. My brain is like a dripping tap of pandemic parenting worries. So, in response to his painfully astute comment, I simply said: “You’re right. That’s exactly what’s been going through my mind.” In return, he just gave me a big, self-satisfied smile and kept looking out the car window.

The internal monologue of so many adults right now sounds something like this: Is my child scarred from this pandemic year? Will my kid be behind everyone else when we emerge? Does my child remember how to make friends? Will my kid know how to handle new experiences? We are all so worried about what the lasting impact of this time might be and on so many levels the answer is -- no one really knows.

Luckily, I was able to get some concrete answers from Dr. Molly Colvin, a friend and Wellesley College classmate. Molly is a clinical psychologist with a PhD in neuroscience who is Director of Mass General’s Learning and Emotional Assessment Program and an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School. A few weeks ago we explored what pandemic anxiety and a return to normal life might look like in adults and teens. This time, in a talk to a K-12 school, we explored what a return from pandemic looks like in elementary and preschool kids.

First and foremost, in her wonderfully soothing voice, Molly explained that coming back from the pandemic, for adults and kids alike, involves letting go of “what might have been” had the pandemic not happened. It DID happen and there’s NOTHING we can do about it. Once we accept that simple (or not so simple fact) we can change the expectations and goals for our kids and ourselves going forward. Furthermore, as we look ahead, rather than saddling ourselves with worries about what things will look like two years from now, an inconceivable timeline to kids and an overwhelming timeline for adults, Molly recommends shortening our time frame to a closer horizon.

In the name of making things more manageable, moving forward also involves naming our feelings about what we have been through during the pandemic. Molly recommended helping our kids name the grief and loss they may be experiencing without dumping (my word not hers) our own pain and anxieties onto them. Even more, she encourages us all to make space for both the joy of returning to normal life (yay!) and the grief we may continue to feel (totally ok). This teaches our kids, as so often happens in life, we need to hold two opposing feelings at the same time.

With some parameters in place -- shortening our time frames, not projecting our anxieties, making room for both joy and grief -- Molly and I moved to the nitty gritty, practical guidance for helping younger kids re-enter life. With older kids, our conversation centered around resilience and how their under-construction brains can actually be useful in developing long lasting coping skills this year. With younger kids, the conversation focused on more concrete strategies, kind of like evenly placed stepping stones on a path. For older kids, the road would be akin to a bumpy road back to normal, navigating the potholes on the journey. The theme for younger kids centered on a metaphor of providing them with a long runway before takeoff, with lots of clear signage and explicit instructions before taking flight.

So what does that long runway look like? In my work these days, I have been describing kids as out-of-shape in every possible way: physically, emotionally, socially and academically. As someone who has gotten herself back in shape after four pregnancies, I don’t believe anyone is irreversibly out of shape, physically or otherwise, but we all need to walk before we can run. We can’t expect kids (or ourselves) to dive back into old activities and seamlessly live at the pace they were living before the pandemic, nor do we necessarily want them to. We need to lay a realistic, empathetic and manageable path for everyone.

Using the long runway metaphor, if we imagine a plane’s journey from the gate to takeoff there are a series of steps along the way. Here are some of Molly’s suggestions for giving our kids enough time and preparation to gently move them back to normal, daily life:

1. Time to transition. Everyone, kids and adults, needs more time to transition right now. We are used to a slower pace and are not as limber at moving from one activity to another. Previewing transitions for little and big kids will help make shifting gears much easier: In the morning before school it might sound something like: “In 10 minutes we’re going to leave the house, what are the three things you need to do before we go?”

2. Changing Sleep Patterns. Kids’ anxiety may still be heightened and, as Molly mentioned, she sees that most often through sleep disruption. If kids have been sleeping in their parents’ beds and parents are ready to have kids move back to their own rooms, it’s time to lay the groundwork for that return. Begin to prepare them that things are going to change. “Tonight I’m going to sit with you for 15 minutes before I leave the room. Let’s set the timer together.”

3. Weaning off screen time. If screen time levels have been at a 10 during the pandemic (they have in my house), but you’re normally at a level 3 (at least we aspire to be) this would be the moment to start to reduce screen time. It will give your kids time before the summer to remember what it felt like to be off screens more than they’re on them. This (painful) conversation can sound something like “Now that things are opening up again that means we’re going to cut back on screen time. What do you think would be a fair amount for this weekend?”

4. What was before? We can’t assume younger kids remember what pre-pandemic life looked like. As Molly reminded us, our five and six year olds may have very little memory of what “before” even was, so focusing on that isn’t particularly useful for them. If they are getting on with business as usual, bemoaning in front of them that we “really miss the way things used to be” might feel very confusing.

5. Give them time. Lack of memory applies even to kids’ relationship to loved ones, including grandparents. If younger kids haven’t seen grandparents in a long time, they may not necessarily remember them very well or feel immediately comfortable. Giving kids time and space to acclimate is critical to their comfort and sense of autonomy. Don’t force it. Instead say something like: “Grandma is so excited to see you and has missed you a lot. When you’re ready, you can show her how you’re feeling too.”

6. Be explicit. As masks come off, socializing indoors returns and playdates resume, younger kids may feel very confused about what is safe for them and their families. It’s adults’ job to be very explicit about how things are changing and why. I like the idea of creating drawings or charts so the new rules are really clear. Predictability and structure is critical to kids and we don’t want to pull a fast one, so lay the groundwork with a conversation that could start with: “I know we’ve been wearing masks outdoors with our friends, but now the scientists have done a lot of research and said we just need to wear our masks indoors.”

7. Replace old routines with new routines. For the kindergarten crew who are deeply attached to routine, if we’re taking away one routine that was in place during the pandemic, we need to replace it with something else. Routines are deeply reassuring for kids. Think about how that change in routine might look in our homes and how we can adjust thoughtfully. Involving our kids in that shift might sound like: “Instead of only ordering our groceries to be delivered, we’re going to start going to the store. Can you help me gather up our reusable bags and make a shopping list?”

8. Scaffold socializing. Returning to socializing for younger kids might require more scaffolding than it did pre-pandemic. If we left our seven year olds at drop-off playdates before COVID, we might need to stick around for the first few playdates in the current reality. Being patient with our kids’ questions and offering as much previewing beforehand will go a long way: “I’m going to stick around for a little while and see your friend too. We’re going to stay for an hour and then head home to get dinner ready.”

We are all so excited to get back out there, but as Molly reminded us, we are also holding more difficult feelings alongside our excitement. We are worried for our kids even though we’re happy things are returning to some semblance of normal. None of this is simple or easy. The imagery of giving our kids a long runway feels so reassuring to me because it leaves room for many different ways to find lift off. Some of our kids will have to taxi for a long time at the edges of the airport and others might be first in line for take-off. Some kids might have to go back to the gate due to mechanical issues and others may be grounded overnight and able to fly the next day. The best we can do is give them lots of safety instructions, breathe deeply and hold their hands as we wait to get into the air.

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Over the past six decades, my dad has taught countless children to swim. As a young man he taught swim lessons on the New York “riviera,” the beaches just over the border into Long Island from his native Queens. (Think The Flamingo Kid if Matt Dillon ever got in the water). When he became a father of four children he taught us each to swim and later, instructed his 13 grandchildren and many of their little buddies to swim as well. The Talmud, the book of Jewish law, obligates parents to teach their children to swim. My dad has followed the spirit, not just the letter of the law, by teaching so many other people’s children to swim as well. From April to October, he can be found in his bathwater-warm pool, welcoming any and all comers, previous swim experience not required.

My childhood was spent raptly listening to the colorful stories about my dad’s days as a lifeguard in the late 1950’s. One of the funniest tales is that of the “phantom pooper” — the summer one child secretly and repeatedly pooped in the club’s pool. But my absolute favorite story, one which spans an entire summer, tracks my dad’s challenging task of teaching Michael, a child absolutely terrified of the water, to swim.

Michael had experienced some kind of earlier trauma around a pool and he was petrified of the water. As my dad fondly recalls, Michael’s first swim lesson took place in the parking lot at the beach club. But week by week, using his signature blend of humor, warmth and determination, my dad inched Michael closer to the pool area. Eventually, after weeks of gentle coaxing, he got Michael as far as sitting on the edge of the pool and putting his feet in the water — a victory unimaginable earlier in the summer.

Although my dad’s given name is Jules, as a young man he was affectionately referred to as “Big Julie,” which captures both the strength and the kindness he embodies. Michael couldn’t say the “j” in Julie so he called my dad “Doolie” instead. By the end of that summer, on the mornings of his swim lessons, Michael could be heard enthusiastically shouting on his proud march from the parking lot to the pool: “Doolie, I’m coming Doolie!!!” The very same parking lot Michael was afraid to leave just weeks earlier had become the place he’d happily abandon in anticipation of his swim lessons with Doolie.

I honestly don’t remember if my dad got Michael to actually swim that summer, because frankly, my dad’s real success wasn’t in teaching Michael to swim. The true wonder of the story is that with patience, encouragement and empathy, my dad helped Michael turn his paralysis into action, his fear into excitement, his hesitance into joy. My dad met this frightened child where he was, literally and figuratively, in order to calmly help him overcome the obstacles in his way.

If you ask any of my dad’s grandchildren, they will describe in detail what it feels like to be in the pool with Grandpa: clad in a pale blue UV swim shirt, khaki safari hat firmly on his head, spitting chlorine water at them clear across the width of the pool. They will talk about how patient he is (unlike their parents). They will talk about the silly songs he makes up to gently coax them off the pool steps. They will talk about how his wacky facial expressions get them them to laugh until they feel confident enough to dunk under the water. I marvel at my dad’s singular ability to help children feel safe enough to overcome their fears. If they want to play catch in the pool, he’ll do that. If they want him to judge their cannonballs, he’ll do that. If they want someone to applaud a newly acquired stroke, he’ll do that. And they might not say it this way, but I will say it for them — when they’re in the pool with Grandpa they feel seen, they feel encouraged, they feel understood, without judgement.

We had the privilege of celebrating a milestone birthday with my dad this week and, as we thumbed through old photos, it gave me an opportunity to reflect on what I most admire about him. My dad has worked incredibly hard his entire life and found success along the way, but his accomplishment that moves me more than any other is the story of Doolie -- his getting little Michael into the pool that summer more than 50 years ago. Because what that story represents is my dad’s true generosity of spirit, his willingness to meet another human being as they are, with their fears and worries, with their hopes and dreams. To every little kid who has stepped in his pool, my dad is doing so much more than teaching them to swim. He is saying: “I believe in you. Take your time. We’ll get there eventually.”

In the coming year, as life resumes, there’s a good chance we will feel what Michael felt that summer — afraid to leave the proverbial parking lot and petrified of the pool. We might feel adrift in our lives, worried we won’t be able to keep ourselves afloat. We might feel hesitant and afraid, unsure of what lies ahead when we let go of the wall. I hope for each of us that we each find our own Doolie, a guide who will meet us where we are, not where we “should be”; a teacher who will lend us grace and humor in the face of our fear; a champion who will make us feel so understood that we will shout their name with joy as we march toward the unknown.

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As the days get shorter and the nights get longer, I find myself waking my kids for school before the sun has come up. I am bleary eyed, stumbling through a dark house when I head towards their rooms, praying I don’t trip over a backpack or errant shoe on my way. Each of them has requested a different wake-up time — my daughter slightly earlier because it takes her longer to get going, my youngest slightly later because he’s (for now) a morning person and my second, the oldest one living at home, sets his alarm, so I don’t even go in.

On a recent morning, as I moved from room to room I was struck, not only by their different time requests, but also the different ways they like to be woken. For my daughter, it’s a more drawn out process — first, a quiet whispering of her name while she stirs, then a gentle nudge, then a harder nudge and a loud bark of her name. The dog circles me throughout this ritual, licking my leg and whining for pats. Still my daughter burrows deeper into her bed, until I rip off her duvet and turn on her lights.

My youngest is completely still when I walk into his room and all it takes is a whisper of his name and a light pat on the arm for him to wake up. He immediately reaches for his glasses, turns to me and orders his light switched on. The dog has followed me into his room, so he gives her a few words of affection, a perfunctory scratch and then he’s up.

My second kid abhors being woken up by someone else. He told me recently it makes him angry (which is no easy feat with this kid.) So he sets his own alarm and about 5 minutes after it is meant to have gone off, I shout toward the general vicinity of his room to make sure he’s awake. I can tell by the way he answers whether or not he’s actually gotten out of bed.

When I used to wake up my oldest, who is now off at college, no matter how early it was, while still sprawled across his too-small bed, he would chirp up with a “Hi, Mama” when I came in to wake him. And that was all he needed.

The morning journey from bedroom to bedroom has me thinking about what it means to parent different kids living in the same house. On a recent episode of The Puberty Podcast, my co-host, Cara Natterson, and I were discussing how to have the TALK, or really a million little talks, about puberty with different kinds of kids. We created a cast list, both for the adults characters and the kid characters, in considering how to have complex conversations about puberty, sex, drugs, you name it. Some characters on the cast list are more eager, some more reticent, some more anxious and others fairly relaxed.

The essence of the episode is that we need to be aware of who each of our kids is and who we are as adults in order to have constructive conversations with them. Where they are coming from? Why did they ask that particular question? Why are they asking no questions at all? Are we giving them too much information? Are we not quenching their curiosity for more? And we need to recognize where we are. Are we sharing stories from our past that are best shared with a friend? Are we answering the wrong question? Are we giving the kids more detail than they can handle? Are we so caught up with our own worries that we’re not meeting their needs?

I realized that my pre-dawn circuits to wake up my slumbering tweens and teens was so similar to the emotional perambulations inherent in this time in their lives. Just as each kid has their own preferred method of a wake-up routine, so too do they have their own take on the roller coaster ride of middle school and high school. Some are perky and want to dive right into a topic, others need a slower process and maybe a nudge to be ready to chat. One kid needs time than the others to slowly emerge before anyone even talks to him from outside the bedroom door.

Then I think about where I am. Am I cranky from a bad night’s sleep? Am I well rested and excited for the day ahead? Does the dog get under my feet and piss me off? Each of these little elements inform how I am when I wake up my kids. So too does my larger sense of self inform our interactions during these complex years. Each time I enter into a small or large conversation with one of them my mood and my lived experience informs how well I am able to talk to them. When I’m frustrated with what’s going on in my day, I am much less able to meet them where they are. When I am optimistic about my own path, I have so much more ability to take the time to figure out where their questions or worries are coming from. When they bring up topics that surface happy recollections from my teen years I handle the conversations well, when their questions dredge up harder memories, it’s more of a struggle for me to feel confident as we talk.

More often than not, I am impatient and cranky and fail to talk to my kids the way it would best suit them. I usually realize it almost as soon as we’ve finished our conversation. Maybe I snap because I’m rushing or maybe I am impatient because they are simply annoying. Perhaps they ask a question I don’t feel prepared to answer because it’s a tricky topic or I simply haven’t given it any thought. Or even hardest for me, my kids are complaining about an issue that I honestly think is no big deal and I’d like them to be quiet about it.

Whatever the reason I fall short, I am trying my hardest to go back and acknowledge to them that I didn’t have the conversation the way I wanted to. Sometimes I apologize if I was particularly unkind and I know the failure of the conversation was more about my mood than my kid’s question. Sometimes, however, I don’t apologize because they were truly being irritating. In that case, I simply say that I wished they’d entered the conversation differently. I truly believe it is OK to tell your teens when they are being annoying — they certainly tell us!

These years raising tweens and teens can feel like we are stumbling around in the dark, tripping on unexpected obstacles, aiming for soothing words but ending up with an irritated bark. We try to respect the customized approach our kids have asked for or we intuit they need, but so often we fail, instead demanding they be where we want them to be. Somedays we do everything right — the right tone of voice, the right questions, the right body language. But it feels like just when we crack the code, everything changes again. The way we woke them yesterday is no longer the way they want us to wake them today. Our (finally) well-honed routine has been upended yet again and we have to start over, a little disheartened and a lot confused, in order to find a new way in.

If we’re lucky, they’ll tell us what the new way looks like — wake me up like this, don’t do this anymore, come in 5 minutes earlier or 5 minutes later. But so often, they don’t know what the new way should be. We need to help them figure it out by asking subtle and not-so-subtle questions and then parsing their responses. Our job is to do the hard work of clarifying their murky answers, often being told we’re not getting it at all but persevering anyway. Each morning, the experiment begins again, to either be rewarded with a sleepy smile or grumbled at beneath lumpy covers.

These days, I remind myself on the mornings that don’t go so smoothly that each day is a fresh start, a new dawn, another opportunity to wake my kids up the way they want and meet them where they are.

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A wet, muddy leash is twisted around my ankles, one arm wrenched behind my back, the other hand feverishly gripping the handle of a second leash. My armpits are ringed with sweat under my (apparently not) breathable raincoat and my feet are covered in grass and dirt inside beat-up Birkenstocks. I am the reluctant parent of two dogs and this is my first time walking them by myself. (Don’t worry, I’m not turning into someone who thinks her dogs are endlessly fascinating. Bear with me.)

I have put off walking the two of them by myself for fear of what it would be like: hard, stressful and probably a total failure. I’m worried the dogs will attack each other. Scared one of them will run away. Stressed I will take the puppy too far for his little legs. Mortified if someone sees me struggling that they will judge me. Also, in my rush out the door I forget to bring poop bags. What if I become that neighbor who doesn’t pick up her dogs’ crap?

The whole experience of manic dread and anticipatory humiliation feels vaguely familiar and then it hits me. It’s just like the first time I took my two older kids out in the double stroller when one was a newborn and one a toddler. When my first kid was an infant I would wait until he was deeply asleep in the stroller before I left the house because GOD FORBID he cried in Duane Reade. But with two kids on different nap schedules I couldn’t use that tactic. At some point, I would have to leave the house with at least one of them awake. I was petrified.

My second kid was hard to settle in his first months of life and rarely went long without a bout of crying. As someone who prides herself on being uber-competent, pushing a crying baby in public spelled utter mortification for me. My older one was mostly oblivious to the crying but sometimes got really upset if he heard his little brother wailing. I was exhausted from it all — the lack of sleep, the physical work of getting an infant to nap, the constant breastfeeding and the need to juggle the different demands of each child.

I finally screwed up the courage to take them out together in the double stroller, mostly because I had no choice. My older one needed to go to school and we needed food and diapers. Those were the days before Fresh Direct and Amazon. I actually had to go to the store.

In fairness, it wasn’t as bad as I feared and we got through those first terrifying trips intact. Sometimes the baby cried and sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes my oldest got upset and sometimes he was content holding his toy truck. Sometimes everything went smoothly and other times I’d forget the diaper bag and the baby would diarrhea up his back. At night I would worry about what errands I had to run the next day that might leave me marooned in public with unhappy children.

The honest truth is that the looming fear that I would make a fool of myself was moot. Everyone else I passed was also busy trying to get through their own day without falling apart. No one laughed at me or berated my parenting. People were mostly generous spirited or at least indifferent. My boys survived those early months under my worn-out eyes as I got by on a steady diet of Halloween candy and PB&J sandwiches. Little by little, it got easier. The baby got older. I got better at steering a double stroller. I gained some confidence with each passing day.

Mostly, it was the kindness of strangers that got me through those tricky moments. Cashiers would give my oldest a sticker and tell me about their own kids, now grown. Other moms on the playground didn’t mention my sweaty pits or filthy stroller covered in Pirates’ Booty. Retirees held the door open for me at the post office so I could push my double stroller through. Baristas at Starbucks would put the straw in my older son’s beloved Horizon Organic Vanilla Milk as I rocked the screaming baby.

My wonderful friends, who kept me afloat in those early days of parenting, will probably write to me and say “You seemed so together. I never knew you were worrying about that stuff.” I never told anyone that when out with my double stroller I feared the entrance to every single store.

We just never know what worries are beneath the surface for anyone else and we cannot judge. So the best way forward is generosity of spirit— engaging a small child of an exhausted mom while she checks out at the store, holding the door open so a parent can push the stroller through, looking the other way when the baby cries. Those tiny moments of kindness were a life raft for me when I was at sea. And now that I am no longer in those days as a parent, I try to return the favor.

The early days of daily mess and tiny victories as a mom taught me something that I have relearned time and again: everyone, on any given day, is just trying to get through their version of pushing their kids in a double stroller for the very first time.

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I’m barreling down the Saw Mill Parkway, my 18 year-old son sitting shotgun next to me on our way to his high school graduation. My kid, dashing in a brand new navy suit, crisp white shirt and dapper pink chambray tie, is a perfect sartorial reflection of his two parents, a little classic and a little quirky.

The week leading up to this moment has been intense and frenetic, as thunderstorms swept the East Coast, arriving just in time for his prom (where I may or may not have been overly enthusiastic during the photo sessions.) And later in the week, a storm of a different kind — my son’s excruciating case of strep throat — necessitating a graduation-eve visit to urgent care for antibiotics and steroids. Each day in this seminal week feeling like a sheer-faced mountain of logistics and worries, evidenced by the pile of sweat-stained summer dresses in the corner of my bedroom.

These manic final days of his high school years were simply a condensed version of the constant efforts in parenthood to thwart the unpredictability of life by planning like crazy. This morning is no different. As we wind our way down the road under the sun-dappled canopies of the trees, my inner monologue sounds like a frantic litany of open questions. Did my parents do the health check required by the school? Did I remember to tell my husband where the extra graduation tickets are? Did I pack tissues in my purse?

I’m pulled out of this endless box-ticking when my son pauses from Snapchatting his friends and asks, “Mom, what’s your favorite song?” My first thought is: “Ugh, I don’t know. My brain is too full of shit to do.” My second thought is, “C’mon Vanessa. You always talk about being present in the moment. Answer him.” So I think for a second (rule out all Indigo Girls’ songs in an effort to seem relevant to my kid) and respond: “Landslide by Fleetwood Mac.”

He gives me a little smile, the same smile he’s been giving me for 18 years, and within seconds, the opening bars of Landslide fill the air. As is by magic, my to-do list evaporates, pushed out by Stevie Nicks’ gravelly voice sliding into the corners of our car. “I took my love, took it down.” I look at my kid and laugh a little, surprised at his putting on MY favorite song the morning of HIS graduation and then gently take hold of his enormous paw of a left hand, perched on the armrest between us.

Well, I’ve been afraid of changin’

‘Cause I’ve built my life around you

But time makes you bolder

Even children get older

And I’m getting older too

As I drive, the tears begin to fall because Stevie is seemingly singing directly to me, about me, my kid, this time in our lives. “Well I’ve been afraid of changin.’” The conundrum that as parents we are thrust into the next stage of our kids’ lives without feeling finished, without truly closing a chapter before moving to the next one. “Cause I’ve built my life around you.” Year after year, putting our kids at the center of our worlds only to have them eventually leave us. The soul-deep truths of this song, tugged out of my heart on this day like saltwater taffy melted in the sun, elastic and messy.

In the car, in this moment, the beautiful and gut-wrenching reality of being a parent stares me in the face: change is scary and growing older is hard, for all of us, but “time makes you bolder.” My God did we learn that this year — me, my son, the people we love. The pandemic unearthed the hardest parts about ourselves, our fears, our weaknesses, our disappointments, and forced us to move past them. We grew bolder, stronger, more courageous. Yet, even in our boldness there is still no resolution, no neat and pretty bow, just the unresolved and effervescent ticks on the clocks of our lives.

“Even children get older.” As we sit and listen to the song together, my son’s life flashes before my eyes — a round-cheeked baby, a sweet boy, a gregarious teen, an insightful man and some days still all of them: the baby, the boy, the teen and the man. He turns to look at me and sees that I’m crying — “Awwww Mom” and he gives my hand a squeeze, maybe a little pleased that I’m so emotional. There are no words in this moment, just love. So, uncharacteristically, I don’t say anything.

As the drive continues, my son moves from one favorite song to another, the bold punctuation marks of his life — the song we played for him as an infant when getting him to sleep; the song the four-year-old version of him danced to in the living room; the song I listened to on repeat the morning of his bar mitzvah. All too soon, we are pulling into the stone archway on his campus, my son humoring me by taking a last mother/son selfie before he goes to meet his friends. As he walks away, I look down at the photo we just took and I see the glow of hope and excitement on his handsome face. I see the exhaustion and intensity of the past week written in lines all over my face. “I’m getting older too.”

Graduation day progresses with excitement and relief, the weather holds for the ceremony, the medicine does its job on my kid’s body. When he is called up for his diploma, our family hooting and hollering from our seats, he veers from protocol and hugs the head of the Upper School. As my kid descends from the stage, diploma in hand, he shouts “Victory!” Two unscripted moments in one, another reflection of how he is equally his mother and father’s son, both embracing and irreverent of ceremony. Our son makes his way back to his seat and my husband and I hug, tears streaming down our faces. Again, no words, just the deep gratitude and profound joy we are feeling in this moment.

I climbed a mountain and I turned around

And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills

‘Til the landslide brought me down

This week is like so many mountains we climb as parents, an exhausting and exhilarating slog, burdened by a heaviness on our backs and a steep incline ahead. Never straight or easy or smooth, but if we’re lucky, we do get to the peak and see our reflections in the snow, on the faces of our children. And then the landslide may bring us down again, requiring us to scale the heights another day.

But in that sometimes all-too-brief moment at the top of the mountain, we take the time to feel the purest of pride. We soak up the breathtaking thrill of raising another human being to reach a milestone in his life. These are the times we put away the to-do lists, we stop planning. These are the moments when there are no words. All we can do is hold hands with love, laugh with joy and cry with gratitude. All we can hope for is the brief and miraculous feeling of standing together at the shimmering peaks of life before we begin to climb again.

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When we were six and eight years old, my younger brother and I changed schools, which required us to take a bus to school from our local train station. Each morning, my mom would pull our Chrysler minivan with faux wood panelling up to the minibus and Nick and I would awkwardly trundle onto the bus, trying to get as far away from the creepy bus driver as possible.

One particular morning in the middle of winter, after a few inches of snow had fallen the night before, my mom dropped us at the train station a little early because she was rushing to a meeting. We sat on a bench and waited for the bus. We waited. And then waited some more. My Swatch Watch told me we had waited a long time and at a certain point, it became clear that the bus wasn’t coming.

I should mention that during that first year in a new school, my brother and I spent a lot of time NOT in school. I was having trouble adjusting and suffered from severe stomach aches most of the year. Little did I know then that those stomach cramps were my body’s expression of my anxiety, but thank God my mom understood and let me stay home. Nick would often stay home with me in solidarity, but our mom knowing full well that he wasn’t sick, banned us from watching TV. We spent most days cozy under piles of comforters, reading Archie Comics. As we adjusted to our new reality that year (partially by avoiding it) we were each other’s life rafts or at least Nick was mine, keeping me afloat.

I say all this so you understand what happened next. Stranded at the bus stop, no cell phones, not even a quarter to make a phone call, we debated what to do. Eventually I decided we should walk home. We lived on the opposite end of town from the train station, literally the furthest point away, at a distance of 3.7 miles. (I know this because I just Googled it.)

That early winter morning, we walked past the still-closed stores on main street and down the long row of churches just outside of town. I have a vivid memory of us trudging past the large, gray stone high school, talking about everything and nothing. Bit by bit, we got closer to home, passing familiar landmarks like the local deli and our old school. Here’s the funny thing. I don’t remember feeling afraid and I don’t remember Nick seeming scared. We just kept going, two little people determined to make our way back home.

Eventually, we made it to our house feeling like a couple of war heroes and then the shit hit the fan because there were any number of adults frantically searching for us. Our school was open, but we hadn’t shown up. They called my mom, who having dropped us at the school bus, had no idea where we were and was panicking. It turned out there had been a snow delay for our bus, but my mom didn’t know.

When she reads this piece, I have no doubt that my mom will email me and say something like: “I am so sorry. I never should have left you — I should have waited for the bus to come.” I can keenly understand my mom’s regret all these years later, because I now have my own arsenal of parenting screw-ups to match my mom’s from that morning. As parents we worry that every one of our mistakes will irreparably scar our children; that the very moment we fail will be the deciding moment for our children’s future happiness.

However, I wasn’t upset that day and it’s not a painful memory now. My mom’s minor slip-up, instead of scarring me, had quite the opposite effect. I need to remind myself of this and hopefully remind any other parent out there rueing their latest failures. The day of the snow delay was utterly thrilling, one of the most exhilarating of my childhood. At a time when I was struggling to find my way in a new school, thanks to my mom’s mistake, I had an opportunity to be brave with my brother, two survivalists making our way in the world. In a year when when my stomach hurt more often than not, when I felt alone and powerless, I had this opportunity to take control of my destiny, with a trusted buddy by my side, and walk us home.

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I feel badly for my kids. I can’t stop thinking about the milestones they’ve missed these last two years: the trips they didn’t go on; the dances they didn’t have; the sleepovers that never happened. As we emerge from the pandemic, out of pity for their lost experiences, I’ve taken on this strange new persona as a parent. After nearly 20 years of being a “no” parent, I think I’ve become a “hell yes” parent.

I was always a pretty strict mom: an avid sleep trainer who stuck to bedtimes on school nights well into my kids’ teenage years. I maintained high expectations about etiquette and dress when we were guests at other people’s houses. I held to strict rules around what tasks needed to be done before my kids could have screen time. In general, I have always run a tight ship, as my oldest likes to say.

I don’t need to rehash all the ways those things fell apart during the pandemic. Electronics were our security blankets and chocolate was our pacifier. Bedtimes went out the window and table manners were a distant memory. My tight ship became a rickety raft held together with twine, barely keeping our family afloat.

Now, life is roaring back and the rules are relevant again: bedtimes matter because school is in-person everyday; table manners matter because we with people outside our family; screen time matters because there’s lots more homework and life to be lived; eating habits matter because growing kids can’t get all their nutrients from Nutella forever.

And yet, even though life is returning, I know they still missed so much and my response has been to let them do all sorts of stuff I wouldn’t normally allow. These days our exchanges sound like: You want to order the most ridiculous thing on the menu that I know you’ll never finish? Sure! You want to go away for the weekend with friends and miss all of your commitments? OK! You want a Yogibo even though I’ve told you no for five years? Definitely! Instead of being a “no mom”, or a “not right now mom”, I’ve become a “hell yes!” mom. I’m not sure if I want to be any of those. I think the goal might be a “sometimes mom” not a “no mom” or a “yes mom.

I need help my kids feel joy and hope while still doing their homework and cleaning their rooms. I want to encourage them to reconnect with people in meaningful and age-appropriate ways while still getting to bed at a reasonable hour. So here are some guard rails to help me find a balance between the yes and no sides of myself in order to provide my kids with some balance too.

1. Pick my moments. Just because I feel sorry for my kids doesn’t mean I need to indulge them all the time. I need to give myself permission to say no sometimes. They don’t need dessert every night. They don’t need every retro t-shirt that comes across their Instagram feed. They don’t need to watch every sporting event when their homework isn’t done. They can have limits again without falling apart.

2. Revisit my values. The decisions I made about parenting before the pandemic were rooted in the values I want to instill in my children. Essentially, I want my kids to be decent, kind human beings who treat other people with respect and appreciate the many things for which they can be grateful. Those values are still in place, if a little obscured these days, but can continue to be a touchstone for when things get murky between a yes and a no.

3. Be in conversation about the limits. As we start to normalize and reset our family patterns, we’ll need to reinstate all sorts of limits on screen time and bedtime, the nutritional value of food and the cleanliness of bedrooms, allowance and curfews. But rather than taking a top down approach, where I dictate and my kids obey, instead I need to involve them in the decision-making about what is fair and realistic. I won’t feel so badly for them if I let them have a say in what feels right.

Letting my kids weigh in on expectations accomplishes something more important than anything else I’ve written, which is this: I might be assuming all sorts of things about how my kids are feeling that they’re not actually feeling. I’m bringing my own tween and teen years into this, remembering all the memorable experiences I had and rueing my children’s loss of those moments. But they don’t have my memory bank. They have their own. So while they may be feeling bummed out, they may not be as bummed as I am about these lost moments. Perhaps, when it comes to my kids, ignorance is bliss and my job is simply to help them feel steady, grounded and safe. The rest will follow.

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I moved my family out of our apartment of thirteen years in an avalanche of Fresh Direct bags, shopping bags from our local market and Zabar’s cooler bags. Shelf by shelf, room by room, into these saggy vessels I loaded up my children’s childhoods: old winter coats gathered for cousins, beloved ceramics haphazardly wrapped in newspaper, Crayola markers dumped into Ziplocks.

The weeks-long packing process progressed in (mostly) deliberate stages, with precious items going first: bar mitzvah suits and baby blankets carefully packed for the attic. Next came well-loved board games in their original cardboard boxes held together with rubber bands, rogue checkers slipping out of cracked corners. Some days the packing involved throwing stuff willy-nilly into an empty bag because I had reached the edge of my mental capacity to sort through things. Other days I ruthlessly discarded every item in my path: socks with no mates, mugs with cracks, hairbands with dead elastic. But the hardest day, the one that brought me to my knees (literally), was the day spent sorting through my kids’ old toys.

In a corner of our apartment sat a closet that had gone basically untouched for years, filled with the toys and tchotchkes of my kids’ childhoods. I had already culled the extensive collection the first summer my kids all went to sleep away camp, so there wasn’t a ton of physical work to do — emotionally, it was another story. I dragged my step ladder over to the many-shelved closet and gingerly took down each overflowing toy bin, like an archaeologist discovering priceless artifacts amongst layers of dirt.

There were the workhorse baskets stuffed with a veritable fortune’s worth of Thomas the Tank Engine trains and tracks. Next came the groaning bins filled with piles of white and green Hess Christmas trucks from the last decade and a half. I brought down Matchbox cars collected from airport gift shops and Duane Reade aisles, baskets precariously balanced on my forearms so as not create an avalanche of tiny metal cars all over my bare, dusty feet. My daughter’s fairy and ballerina puzzles followed, triggering a belated awareness of how gendered my kids’ early childhood toys had been. On a higher shelf, Dora the Explorer’s lavender plastic backpack, tinged yellow from time, was unearthed in the same bin as old play phones, mini sunglasses and toy wallets. And way, way up at the top of the closet were the treasured baby toys — Fischer Price rainbow-colored plastic stacking rings and red Sesame Street mailbox, black and white infant sensory toys and a scuffed Sophie the Giraffe.

Each basket I pulled down flooded the room with mixed emotions about my early days as a mother: the boredom and the wonder, the humor and the irritation of those years. I could almost reach out and touch the humdrum moments spent watching my kids complete a puzzle for the millionth time, and my needing to exclaim, yet again, how clever they were; those frustrating times when they stacked the smaller plastic rings before the larger plastic rings, ruining the perfect size order of the rainbow; those victorious moments when I built the perfect train track for my son and he played with it delightedly for hours; the endless cups of “tea” I drank while lying on the floor hoping to sneak in a nap; the delicious way my daughter would load and unload Dora’s backpack, singing the song “I’m the Map, I’m the Map” over and over again.

As I picked through the toys, I remembered with utter clarity the ordinariness of my days mothering young kids. I could easily access the mild impatience I felt watching chubby hands try in vain to fit the wrong shapes into the shape sorter. I effortlessly conjured the sleepy boredom inspired by small bodies shuffling on their knees while pushing trains around the track. Less accessible were the moments of unfettered joy — when my daughter first caught the beachball now deflated in the corner of a bin, or when the magnets on my kids’ toy fishing rods finally “hooked” a fish in the water table. As I sat amongst the debris of their childhoods, I found myself wading through my many, many moments of impatience and exhaustion trying to get to the hard-to-reach gems of elation and happiness.

The deeper I dove into the toy bins, the tighter my chest grew with the painful realization that the boredom, the impatience, the lack of being present, garnered a larger share of the memories being called forward. While the thrill, the laughter and the pleasure of the day-to-day life of raising little kids seemed to occupy a much smaller corner of these memories. Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around — the joy outweighing the boredom? Maybe I hadn’t done this mothering thing right at all.

I began to wonder if my kids’ childhoods had slid past me almost unnoticed, like strangers on the sidewalk outside a restaurant window. The waves of recollections that came to me as I packed were of the mundane moments, and I don’t mean the simple-pleasures kind of mundane, more like the ho-hum brand of mundane. Was I too late to savor this fleeting experience that would never be again? Visceral waves of regret swept over me and settled heavy on my skin, pressing down hardest over my heart.

Overwhelmed, I slid down to the floor that had once been covered by graham cracker crumbs and I leaned against the old sofa that had survived many leaky diapers. Flashing before my eyes were all those older women on line at the grocery store who encouraged me to “enjoy every second because it will be over before you know it” and well-meaning relatives who reminded me that “the days are long and the years are short.” Of course they were correct, but I had no capacity to hear them. I was too focused on rushing my kids to preschool or hurrying them out of the playground for bath time. Why was I in such a rush? I was too distracted cutting grapes in half or cooking chicken nuggets in the toaster oven to actually listen to their curious questions shouted from the kitchen table. I was too busy feeling bored or impatient or frustrated or overwhelmed or tired, always so Goddam tired.

And now, here was all the incriminating evidence littered around me, physical manifestations of my failure to be truly present while shepherding four living creatures from infants to toddlers to kids. A sense of remorse blanketed achingly over my shoulders because I knew in that moment that I had failed to heed the warnings of strangers and loved ones alike: “Blink and you’ll miss it.” But how did I possibly miss it? I was sitting right there the whole time amongst the Pirate’s Booty and the Uno cards. I was perched on the edge of the bath watching rubber duckies spit water and lying on twin beds reading Frog & Toad. Somehow I missed it anyway. There in body, but not in spirit, absently nodding along to their discoveries in the park and distractedly playing the tooth fairy late at night, but my mind was elsewhere. Could they feel my distraction? “Mommy, Mommy, LISTEN to me! WATCH me!”

I kept sorting through the toys, tears leaking down my face with the dueling emotions of fond nostalgia and painful regret keeping me company. The fading light in my corner of the apartment told me that my time was up, so I loaded the Fresh Direct bags filled my kids’ childhoods into the trunk of my car and drove to our new home. I started to lug the lumpy bags toward the attic door, but was waylaid by my 13-year-old daughter. She immediately sensed something was afoot and stopped to ask me what was in the bags, so I dropped everything and sat on the floor next to her.

My daughter started sorting through the bags herself, holding up beloved toys and exclaiming in her signature raspy voice, “Oh, I loved this one!” and “Do you remember how I used to carry this everywhere?” Together we reminisced about her red Abby Cadabby plastic purse and I watched her rediscover the Dora the Explorer backpack while singing aloud “I’m the Map” with the enthusiasm unique to adolescent nostalgia. We went through the bags object by object, finishing each other’s sentences while recollecting long-forgotten moments and giggling over her more outrageous antics.

As we sat on the floor outside the attic door and laughed together, I looked into my daughter’s eyes sparkling with her own remembered happiness of childhood. She recounted with an effervescent glee the tiny, wonderful moments that were conjured by this bag full of toys. My chest began to feel a little looser. My heart a little lighter.

Listening to my daughter describe things from her perspective, I realized it was ok that I was often bored and impatient when my kids were little. My memories were not her memories. My complex feelings around raising small children were not her joyful recollections of being a small child. She didn’t look at her puzzles and say “Mom, remember how you were counting the minutes until bath time?” She was busy soaking up her own memories, not mine. When she looked at her plastic ducks that quacked when she pulled them, she beamed with happiness at her own recollections and didn’t say “Mom, remember how irritated you got when I insisted on pulling these all the way to preschool?” When she found some old bath toys and fondly described the game she and her brother played with them, she didn’t say, “Mom, remember how you used to zone out while we were in the bath thinking about the glass of wine you were going to have when we went to bed.”

Sitting there, I felt so much relief when I realized that I hadn’t failed, I just hadn’t succeeded. And the truth is, I’m not sure there is even failure or success in raising kids. There are just many days along the way that are both nourishing and disappointing, thrilling and ordinary, meaningful and forgettable. And every stage, really every minute, is an opportunity to write a new page in the story of being a parent, because our kids are so much more generous to us than we are to ourselves. Thanks to my daughter’s own reaction when she saw her toys, I could see it was just fine that sometimes as I walked with her, I wasn’t really listening to what she had to say. It was not the end of the world that I did not relish reading bedtime stories every night. She did not need to know that the tenth time she completed a puzzle, I didn’t really care. I wish that all those well-meaning strangers in the supermarket line had instead said to me: “So many days raising small kids will be boring and some days will be exhilarating — both are part of the journey.”

Now my kids are older and frankly, so much more interesting to me. These days, I do relish the thoughts they share over the dinner table. I do soak up the wonder of the conversations we have on our walks. I do savor lying on their beds at night when they don’t say much at all. I can only believe that the fraught experience of sorting through their toys, which triggered the painfully ordinary memories of raising little kids, was actually a gift in this moment because it allowed me to see how much I treasure parenting them now. Sitting on the floor of our old apartment, surrounded by their toys, I bathed in the remorse of not having been present in earlier days. Sitting on the floor of our new home, listening to my daughter tell her stories, I was struck that somewhere along the way, I had grasped how to be present with my kids. I had learned at some point to enjoy the ordinary moments of being their mom. I had discovered that I while the old toys filling the shopping bags may not change, our perspective on them sure does.

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This week I was on a panel of alums speaking to a group of peer leaders from my high school Alma Mater (can you say that about high school?) The other panelists and I shared our “wisdom”— mistakes made, lessons learned, successes celebrated — from our high school and college years. We shared the highways and byways of our adulthoods to date, changes in college majors, shifts in career paths, moves across country. We were honest and open, encouraging and enthusiastic.

Then I realized, we had been talking AT these 17 and 18 year olds for an hour. I am embarrassed to say it took me that long to realize that we should have been asking questions of these kids. Lesson number one in any conversation with kids of ANY age, find out where they’re at before you start talking. So I belatedly asked them near the end of the panel, “What are you all most worried about?” And they responded, as if in a chorus with a conductor, “AP’s. We’re worried about AP’s.”

I said to them (and parents of these children please forgive my presumptive intrusion): “If you have a choice between studying for your AP’s or hanging out with your friends on a sunny spring day, hang out with your friends on a sunny spring day.” (I did acknowledge that the college credit offered for AP’s can helpful for financial or academic reasons but they are not the end-all, be-all. )

I explained to them that the memories I have from my senior year had nothing to do with AP’s — I truly have no recollection of taking them, of my scores, of any of it. What I remember from senior year are the interstitial moments, the times that didn’t matter, but mattered so much. I told them that after this awful year, the AP’s didn’t matter — that they deserved to take joy where they could find it.

I mentioned some of my favorite meaningless meaningful moments on the very campus they were inhabiting: Sitting on a sunny lawn outside of the upper school talking nonsense with friends. Hanging out in the senior hallway propped against wooden benches on dark gray acrylic carpeting. Leaning against cars in the senior parking lot at dusk after lacrosse practice. Buying a chicken cutlet sandwich on a roll smothered with mayonnaise at the deli down the road. I can smell and taste and feel those memories to this very day. I cannot smell or taste or feel my AP’s.

Somehow, in that moment, I was able to tell these kids who were blurry blobs in an auditorium projected to me via a Zoom screen, what I hadn’t yet been able to articulate to my own senior studying for his AP. It was the jolt I needed to remember to turn to my kid and say: I don’t care what you get on your AP (apologies to his wonderful teacher.) I just want you to create some memories for yourself before this time is over. I want you to find your own moments in the spring sunshine, in the June dusk, in the musty hallways, before it is all over.

Our kids are carrying such heavy burdens as they emerge from this time — some heavier than others which may take years (or a lifetime) to heal and repair. Besides loving them and finding the help they need to move forward, we can show them our care and support in other ways. We can teach them the importance of the moments that get no score, that require no studying, but will carry the most weight in 30 years.

We can encourage them to get outside, to turn the music louder, to lie in the grass. We can ask them about the parts of their day that have nothing to do with obligations or commitments, but have the potential for laughter and joy. We can show them that learning to live fully has nothing to do with AP’s or SAT’s, but about finding the meaningful within the meaningless.

And while we’re at it, maybe we can remind ourselves of that too.

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Last Thursday marked the closing days of the most boring spring break in my children’s lives. You might wonder how it could possibly compete with spring break 2020 when the world was locked down? Last year’s spring break, while surreal and scary, was also filled with Marshmallow Fluff and Nutella sandwiches, movie marathons and unlimited screen time. This year, life had returned to enough of a version of normal where those kinds of comforting indulgences were no longer commonplace in our house. In this year’s break, we actually ate vegetables, instituted screen limits and even managed to brush our teeth, but we still went absolutely nowhere. So essentially, boredom personified.

As the end of break approached, my parental guilt began to kick in — I hadn’t organized anything cool for my kids the whole time. I hadn’t made the days feel special or unique. I hadn’t injected much joy or variety into our routine. Scrambling to find something fun for their final days off, I took a friend’s recommendation of a local ropes course and snagged one of the few available spots before the kids went back to school.

The morning of, I woke my kids up early and dragged them to the ropes course. My daughter is part squirrel, so she was very happy to be going climbing, but my younger son was ambivalent (read: totally and completely unpsyched) about going. As background, we forced him to go horseback riding in Costa Rica a couple of years ago and he was bucked off his spooked horse and landed flat in the sand. Needless to say, not a successful outing. And here I was again, pushing my kid to try something new because that’s what parents do, right? We open our kids’ eyes to interesting experiences and make them into well-rounded people. Maybe. Maybe not.

The ropes course orientation was more involved than my college orientation — the harnessing station, the safety station, the practice station. Let’s just say I didn’t comprehend a single thing the staff was telling us. I didn’t understand how my kids were supposed to clip and unclip. I wasn’t clear on which thing was used for which thing. I was clueless as to what was about to happen.

They got up on the platform and my daughter started the process of clipping and unclipping, climbing and balancing, moving from section to section. I barely saw her for the rest of the morning. Then my younger kid got up for his turn and I watched as he tried to remember how to open and close the carabiners, recall the order of locking and unlocking, the rules for moving and stopping. And I just stood there on the walkway below him wondering: what the hell had I signed up for?

He couldn’t get the first set of clips right, so he stepped back off the platform and asked for help. He made it through the first few sections and then got stuck at the first zip line. Luckily, one of the staff people was there to give him some guidance and get him going again; a perfect stranger walking him through the complicated steps of flinging his body across the forest canopy. My kid kept going, moving through each element with more and more ease until he finally got to the end. I was exhausted. Wrung out. He was expressionless. Deadpan.

When I signed him up for the course, I knew my kid would be reluctant to go, but then imagined he would ultimately feel triumphant and euphoric. In reality, after completing one round, he ambled over to me, still strapped into in his harness, and asked if he was done. If once was enough. (We were an hour into a three-hour session.) Do I let him stop or do I push him to keep going? It seemed a shame to let him stop now that he had finally gotten the hang of all the complex steps. On the other hand, he had made it through unscathed (refer above to the horse incident) and maybe once was enough.

After a moment’s contemplation, I looked down at him and told him he needed to do one more round and then he could stop. I think I secretly still hoped that he would find that triumphant moment I had imagined for him. He got back up on the platform without too much complaining and started another course, waiting patiently behind kids who were struggling to understand the clip system just as he had. After finishing the second round, without a word, he went to the un-harnessing station, freed himself and then headed to the car for a snack. Let’s just say, there was not a whiff of triumph around my kid. No celebrations or sense of victory. He was a kid who had been asked to do a job. He did the job and was now ready to get on with his life.

So I wondered, while he and I sat in the car munching on snacks and waiting for my daughter, if I had it to do over, would I sign him up again? As one does in my line of work, I started to list all the valuable things he had learned in the mildly grueling two hours that had preceded. While there was no joy in Mudville that morning, there were plenty of life lessons to be appreciated, by me if not by him:

• Ask for a help before you give up. When he was stuck at the very first part of the course, instead of giving up, he stepped away, asked for help and was able to get moving. There’s often a temptation to quit before we even get started, but he didn’t give in and found some help.

• Sometimes important guidance comes from strangers. When he needed to learn a whole new safety system at the zip line section, a kind staff person patiently walked him through how to do it. I embarrassingly started to chime in, but quickly remembered to shut the hell up. It reminded me that not all good advice comes from those near and dear.

• Complex things get easier with practice. My own inclination is to give up when things get complicated and don’t come naturally to me. Watching my kid gain confidence by methodically practicing the complex steps on the course was a powerful example of how much easier things get with practice.

• Mastering new things doesn’t always bring triumph. After he finished, while we sat in the car shoving Cheez-its in our mouths, I kept telling my kid how proud I was of him for finishing the ropes course. I was, sincerely, blown away, but he was utterly unmoved. He didn’t celebrate or want my adulation for making it through the morning. He met the expectation that was placed on him and was ready to move on. Full stop.

• We can’t always know what will turn out to be special. There is no crystal ball as to what will be a home run when it comes to exposing our kids (and ourselves) to new experiences. There were outings that I thought were a sure thing that ended up being a disaster (Empire State Building anyone) and outings that I was convinced would be painful that ended up being euphoric (thank you Andy Warhol).

So as we venture into this brave new world of post-pandemic(ish) reality, with kids who are dragging themselves out of bed the same way we are, my own guidelines for new experiences will be these:

• We don’t have to force kids to do every single thing, but we should help them move back into the world and take safe risks, even if it feels hard.

• Our kids have more capacity to accomplish difficult things than we give them credit for and sometimes we need to shut our mouths and just watch them.

• Each of our kids will handle new experiences differently (remember my squirrel?) so we can’t treat them as one-size-fits-all. Some will leap into the unknown and some will need us to stand right below them as they navigate the course.

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I was a crappy parent of toddlers. I was irritated, bored, and reactive. I had no patience for my kids’ efforts to put on their own shoes or zip their own coats. I was always in a rush to get on to the next activity, annoyed by their slowness. I found sitting on the carpet doing puzzles or playing games utterly mind-numbing. I lost my cool literally every time my kids spilled their cups of water across the table. I did basically everything Dr. Becky tells you not to.

When my kids were little, much of my day was spent thinking about the moment I would be done with dinner time/bath time/bedtime so I could zone out watching TV or read a book. I constantly felt like I was faking my enthusiasm for whatever my kids were doing, while underneath the surface seething with a combination of annoyance and exhaustion. Layered on top was my guilt that I was not “savoring every moment,” as every well-meaning septuagenarian in the grocery store checkout line exhorted me to do. As I outwardly smiled and nodded at their well-intentioned advice, my inner voice want to tell them to fuck right off.

So it might not surprise you to learn that I, heavily pregnant with my fourth child while my others were seven and under, found myself in a therapist’s office. I was there because, frankly, I was wondering how the hell I was going to survive the next 40 years. Overwhelmed by the prospect of caring for yet another being who needed their diaper changed, their swing pushed, their tiny teeth brushed, I was consumed with profound shame that I was simply going through the motions of raising my children without a whiff of joyful exuberance.

What the therapist (who looked just like the well-meaning ladies in the grocery store line) told me changed my life forever. “Vanessa, different people are good parents at different stages of their kids’ lives. Some people are wonderful with babies and awful with teenagers. Some people are bored by toddlers but adore adult children. You have to give yourself permission not to love every second or every stage of your kids’ lives.”

It was as if she picked up an unbearable weight from my shoulders and set it down on the ground next to me so I could continue on my long journey. I felt absolved of my parenting sins — my boredom, my impatience, my anger, my irritation — and freed to start over the next day, liberated from my guilt and shame. The therapist offered me a fresh start by giving me permission to reimagine myself as a parent at each stage of my kids’ development.

Here’s the funny thing. I didn’t love parenting toddlers, but I adore parenting tweens and teens. Developmental psychologists will tell you they are similar stages in so many ways — rapid brain development, individuation, tantrums — but since my toddlers didn’t have a lot of language, life was heavy on frustration and light on charming toddler-isms. My teens are expressive and funny as hell, which balances out the harder stuff — mood swings, crappy decision-making, pungent odors.

I recently interviewed Dr. Tina Payne Bryson for The Puberty Podcast and she talked about how “history is not destiny” — an important concept from her book with Dan Siegel, The Power of Showing Up. What she means by that is two-fold. One, that our personal histories, i.e. how we were raised, don’t need to dictate how we care for our own kids. And two, how we parented yesterday or last year doesn’t need to dictate how we parent today or next month. We have a daily opportunity to do things differently (and maybe even better) than we have in the past.

So for those of you, just trying to get through each day, not doing a spectacular job, not loving every second, most definitely not savoring the moment, I offer you the lifeline that was offered to me: your child will move to a new stage and with them, you will have an opportunity for your own reinvention as a parent. At every turn, you have unfulfilled potential to become better, more loving, more patient, more present, than you were before. And when things get dark, just remember: history is not destiny — tomorrow is a new day.

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I have been packing my kids’ camp duffels for a decade, spending countless hours ordering uniforms, tagging clothing, buying toiletries, creating photo albums, addressing envelopes, and here is what I have finally learned: it does not matter what I pack in those bags.

When my oldest child went to camp for the first time 10 years ago, I obsessed over what went into his duffels. The uniform t-shirts and shorts were expertly nametagged and folded, the pristine pairs of socks lined up in packing cubes, toiletries (with duplicates) labeled with ruler-straight name stickers. If Martha Stewart had packed camp duffels, she couldn’t have done better.

And then the duffels came home – 99% of his clothing was stained, half his bag was filled with other people’s underwear. And the kicker – his overpriced sunscreen and bug spray unopened after seven weeks at camp!

I was undeterred by the innards of those returned duffels and continued on the same path as my other kids went away summer after summer. By the time I had four children at sleepaway camp and had packed eight duffels at once, I made Martha Stewart look like a lightweight.

I imagined that if I purchased the right socks, acquired exactly the right bathing suits, labeled each ping pong ball with their names (seriously?!!!) that they would be deliriously happy at camp. I believed that since I couldn’t control what happened every day for the seven weeks they were away from me, at least I could control what went with them for those seven weeks.

The summer I sent all four kids to camp, I woke up in a cold sweat the night their bus left, realizing I had forgotten to pack my three boys their pajamas. I berated myself for the failure, running over and over in my mind how I could have missed such an important element that would keep my kids cozy through the cold Maine nights. The next morning, I ran to the post office and Priority mailed them their plaid, flannel pajama bottoms, praying they would get there quickly, then sending apology emails to each of my boys, falling on my packing sword that I had forgotten their pajamas.

When we had a phone call a week later, the first question I anxiously asked my kids was: “Did the package with your pajamas arrive? I’m so sorry I blew it guys.” Their answer? “Oh yeah, there’s been a package in the mail hut for a week but we haven’t gotten it yet.” I believe my literal response was: “What the fuck assholes? I’ve been sleepless for a week, busted my butt to get you those pajamas, worried sick about you all and now you can’t even get your lazy asses to the mail hut.” (Top-notch parenting, I know.)

But here’s the truth: It did not matter what I packed in those duffels or later sent up, because ultimately I couldn’t control what happened once my kids got on those camp buses. There were summers when they were happy and summers when they struggled. There were summers when I packed them everything they asked for, to later be told it was all wrong; and summers when I threw in things they didn’t want, only to be informed they were lifesavers. And most often, whatever I packed got lost or broken, possibly to be found under a bed or behind a shelf, but most often gone to the great lost and found in the sky, never to be seen again.

The fact is, what went into their duffels was irrelevant, because no matter what I packed, each summer had its own alchemy over which I held no power – it was a witches’ brew of the successes and failures of the school year, mixed with the particular chemistry of the kids in their bunk, combined with the magic a beloved counselor could add to the mix. It was out of my hands, left to the camp Gods who shone (or not) on my children without rhyme or reason.

Packing duffels was my expression of hope and love for my kids, a demonstration of every wish I had for them. In reality, I would have been a lot better off chilling the fuck out and snuggling with them on the couch or taking them for ice cream instead. My laser-like focus on crap that was only going to get lost, kept me from truly preparing them for a great summer.

Here’s what I wish I had done with that time instead:

• Helped them unpack the good and the bad of the school year.

• Listened (without judgment) to the worries they had about the summer.

• Encouraged them to try new things and move out of their comfort zone.

This year, with two kids aged out of camp and two in their waning summers, I have finally learned my lesson. My 12-year-old and I packed his duffel in 15 minutes. Literally. My older kids came filing into his room one-by-one to witness the phenomena of Mom not giving a shit anymore, laughing at me and regaling their younger brother with the mania that colored the filling of their own duffels. They shared stories of all the ways I irrationally freaked out about packing over the past decade, lovingly mocking me for my well-intentioned failings.

As we sat on the floor together, I confessed to my kids that all these years I had held a misplaced belief that packing them the perfect duffels would provide them with the perfect summer. A hope that I have learned to be a false one, but for which I now have so much gratitude. All those summers I filled their bags with every dream I held in my heart for what their lives would be like when they were away from me, but the duffels provided me with the lesson, over and over, that we cannot plan for or control our kids’ happiness. We are so much better off taking a breath and just being with them, than trying to manage the world around them. My love would have been so much more powerful as a quiet listener than an obsessive packer.

Like everything else in parenting, God willing, I will get a second (and third, and fourth) chance to learn from my past delusions. As I help my kids pack for college and first apartments and beyond, I hope I can remember that it does not matter what is in the bags. I cannot control the future, I can only be present with my love for them.

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As someone who spends her life working toward the goal of making adolescents feel accepted, included and loved, I think I have found the way forward: bottle up the exuberant energy at a Harry Styles concert and generously spritz it on youths everywhere. I swear this will make their adolescence just a little less painful and a lot more joyful.

I was working on this piece, but then nearly shelved it because, as luck would have it, Harry kissed my brother Nick full on the mouth for all attendees of the Venice Film Festival (the paparazzi, watchers of TikTok, scrollers of Instagram and perusers of The New York Post’s Page 6) to see. I thought: Nah, I can’t write about it now. But the goal of this piece – what we can learn from Harry’s concerts about making kids feel awesome – hasn’t changed, even if my personal version of 6-Degrees-of-Harry-Styles has…

I had the privilege of taking my 14-year-old daughter and her two oldest, dearest friends to Harry’s concert at Madison Square Garden in the days leading up to their start of 9th grade. To say everyone’s feelings were close to the surface that night is a gentle understatement. But as we entered MSG, all nerves about the coming year were forgotten, pushed aside by an atmosphere sparkling with a youthful optimism reflected in the glittered faces, hot pink feather boas and rainbow ensembles all around us. And then the music started, Harry bounced onto the stage in a red and pink, striped, sequin jumpsuit that I only wish I could pull off. The noise in the arena elevated to Beatles-mania-level, a sound created in the natural habitat of tens of thousands of young people pouring their adoring delirium out into the world.

In between songs, Harry repeatedly thanked the crowd for being there and making it possible for him to entertain us all. He presented his drummer with a birthday cake, leading the crowd in a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday. Harry profusely recognized the talents of his bandmates throughout and in the climax of the night, he helped one audience member come out of the closet and another ask her boss for a raise. He encouraged us all to find joy and happiness amongst each other, which we did, buoyed by the optimism and love flowing from each of his intoxicating songs. We were indeed in Harry’s house and damn lucky to be there.

There was generosity of spirit that night in every corner of the massive arena – strangers taking photos of each other, complimenting outfits, letting them cut in line to the bathroom because they had to go. It felt like all of the joyfulness and warmth that had been sapped from the world over the past few years had come flooding back in a golden light. And the girls alongside me emanated unabashed jubilation, singing their hearts out to every single word, tears of joy shimmering on their long eyelashes, bodies dancing with abandon to song after song. They were enveloped in the collective embrace of adolescent elation. A kind of unselfconscious delight I had never witnessed amongst kids, even when I was a kid.

Harry exhorted the crowd to be kind, to be joyful, to be grateful for all that we could share in the couple of hours spent in each other’s company. As the night came to an ecstatic close, sweaty and exhausted, I watched ebullient adolescents (and lots of delighted middle aged folks) stream out of the concert, and wondered what adults could learn from the extraordinary alchemy of a Harry Styles concert. What special sauce can we include in our daily lives to give kids some of the triumphant glee found in this fleeting experience?

• A little (or a lot) of gratitude goes a long way. Harry’s thanks to any and all at the concert created a blanket of gratitude over the arena. For those who care for adolescents, we know that “thank you’s” can be thin on the ground. But he made it cool to be thankful, which hopefully inspired them to see its value. It certainly reminded me how much kids love to be thanked too.

• Singing and dancing is magical. The exultant rush of full-throated singing and unrestrained dancing amongst thousands of people can’t be duplicated at home or in a classroom or on the sports field, but we can capture some of the magic of letting our freak flags fly. That sense of rejoicing can be found in little moments of ordinary life – just crank up the speakers and recapture the thrill, if only for a minute.

• Joyful amazement can be found after it has (seemingly) been lost. During the past few years it felt like we might never regain the ability to feel jubilant, but Harry’s concert taught me that, even when life feels dark, we can refind our sense of euphoric celebration. We need to stay optimistic that the opportunity will come again.

• Everyone is welcome. The most important lesson I learned that night was the power of inclusivity – people of all shapes, sizes, colors, genders, and sexual orientations were together under one roof led by the lessons of Harry’s music and the example he set, that everyone, absolutely everyone, is welcome in Harry’s house.

So while we may not all make it to a Harry Styles concert this year or ever, the lessons learned are universal. The extraordinary alchemy of a Harry Styles concert is actually, in the end, quite ordinary. Its magic tethered to all the daily things we try to teach kids: say thank you; don’t be afraid to sing and dance; hope is never lost; and everyone is welcome.

Maybe we can find a place to feel good and we can treat people with kindness.

Yes sometimes that place is at a concert, but more often than not that place is inside of each of us, in our homes and our schools. Perhaps we just need to pull out the feather boas and glitter a little more often?

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I saw a recent picture of myself jokingly rolling my eyes and it brought me back to the age when I was an EXPERT eye roller. Granted, I have comically large eyeballs, but regardless of their size, when I was fifteen years old, there was no one who could beat my eye roll (often preceded by a vicious lip curl and followed by a dismissive shoulder shrug.) My parents begged me to stop doing the eye rolls and lip curls, to no avail. It was only when a friend told me I looked “deeply unattractive” when I did them, that I actually broke the habit. That’s a topic to unpack another time…

So the real question is: what was I really trying to say in those years with my unpleasant facial expressions and body language? As a kid, I wasn’t shy about speaking up in class or around the dinner table, so why did I choose to use those gestures instead of words to express how I was feeling?

In a 2016 New York Times blog post Dr. Lisa Damour, teen-girl maverick, offered several reasons why teen girls roll their eyes so much: a resistance to authority, a push for autonomy, an act of aggression, a method of deflection. The eye roll is clearly a utility player in their roster of responses. The truth is that while we may dismiss the eye roll and many other signatures moves from teens of all genders, that unspoken language allows them to communicate difficult feelings without having to express them aloud. The slumped shoulders, the hoodie over the head, the hair in the face, the shrug, the stare-down are some fan favorites that convey so much to others without needing to utter a word.

And while it’s tempting to dismiss this behavior as “what teens do,” a recent sociological study of divorce rates in Holland and the United States gave me pause for seeing the issue of teen body language as minor. The study captured major media attention in news outlets like The Economist with clickbait headlines that read “Parents of teenage daughters ‘more likely to get divorced’” followed by articles essentially blaming teenage girls for causing their parents’ split (which of course made me irate). However, in a published interview with the sociologists who conducted the study, the findings are much more nuanced, intriguing and less misogynistic.

The researchers explain: “Our results suggest that parents of teenage daughters would do well to adopt more egalitarian attitudes towards gender roles and a greater understanding of how conflicts could come up. Struggles with teenagers will still happen, but better preparation and knowledge of the wants and needs of their teenage daughters could reduce the strain between partners.” They go on to describe an interesting phenomenon in their findings in which men who grew up with sisters and had teenage daughters did not have an increased divorce rate over men who had teen sons. “This suggests that men who experienced more mixed gender relationships when growing up may be better prepared for similar relationships in their own households.” Meaning, that men who had the opportunity to understand teenage girls in their own families of origin were better equipped to parent them. In the families where the fathers did not have sisters, the researchers indicated that it’s not the girls’ behavior at fault, but the fathers’ outdated gender expectations and lack of understanding of their daughters that creates the tension.

When considering the study, I reached to out my friend, Sophie Jacobi-Parisi, a matrimonial lawyer and MSW in NYC, who emphasized that “for couples who already have high conflict and few healthy ways of managing that conflict or communicating with one another, It is not unreasonable to think that the addition of an eye rolling, door slamming daughter, would exacerbate the couple’s conflict to divorce (versus a silent, barely there teenage son).” While the study claims that teen boys’ problems do not strain marriages the way teen girls’ issues do, it does make me wonder if that is simply because, as Dr. Cara Natterson points out in Decoding Boys, we let our sons go quiet in their teenage years when really we need to encourage them to speak to us.

The sociologists findings are a useful caution, not as to whether those of us with teenage daughters are at risk of getting divorced. Rather, they act as a warning to those of us who are unwilling or unable to try to understand the outward (often irritating) signs of teen girls’ complicated emotions. This study underlines how important it can be for parents to try to understand our kids unspoken language rather than dismissing our teens’ challenging behavior, because as it turns out, an eye roll is not just an eye roll.

The stereotypical and annoying things our teens do with their faces and their bodies are actually signs that our kids are trying to express hard and uncomfortable stuff, but they either don’t have the language or the willingness to voice it. While it would be lovely if our teens could engage in calm, eloquent conversation with us, for many reasons — hormones, lack of practice, societal conditioning, the media (when in doubt, blame the media) — they are not always (maybe ever) going to give us the gift of deliberative dialogue. That does not make their feelings or thoughts any less important, but it does make it harder to get at the core of what’s going on. The goal with our teens, as frustrating as it might be, is to understand what is going on underneath the hood of the car, even if the car is overheating.

Here is the reminder I’m keeping close to my heart as we all slog through what feels like month 100 of this winter. Teen body language isn’t something to be dismissed or joked about (as laughable as it can be sometimes), rather it is a series of important, coded messages to the people around them about their own difficult feelings.

• Eye Roll: I am angry about what you did.

• Slouching in a chair: I am hurt by what you said.

• Hair covering my face: I feel self-conscious

• Slumped shoulders: Stop looking at my breasts.

• Shrug: You don’t understand.

• Lip curl: You’re not listening to me.

• Hoodie up: You’re treating me like a little kid.

The more we appreciate and try to understand ALL forms of our kids’ communication, the better off our kids (and apparently our marriages) will be.

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The best novels sit somewhere at the intersection of regret and hope, sometimes at one corner and sometimes another. The final pages cause a dull ache in my persistently beating heart, just a little sore from the emotion being wrung out of me word by word. Often these books employ a kind of mundane nostalgia, nothing grand or overwrought, ordinary in its scope but heartbreaking in its effect.

Late at night, when the rest of the house has gone to sleep and I read too quickly through the final pages like a child finishing a melting ice cream cone, the tears threaten to tip over the edge of my bottom lids. I let them slide silently down my cheeks, not wanting to wake my husband because there is nothing is wrong but the painful beauty of finishing a magical book.

There haven’t been that many in my life. I can count the ones I remember on one hand, two by Nicolle Krause left me sobbing into my pillow from the sheer power of fallible humanity in the stories she told. Tonight’s book was different because for much of it, I didn’t love it and then I loved it so much I felt it had reached into my soul and held on with two fists.

I bought This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub because I thought it was about a middle-aged woman recapturing lost youth, something I might be able to relate to as a 46-year-old mother of four and all the ordinariness that embodies. I’d pick the book up and put it down, both wanting and not wanting to know what happens to the protagonist as she time travels, not sure which outcome to root for.

For most of it, nothing felt satisfying in the book, not the love stories or the friendships or the adventures (although her dollhouse-perfect depiction of the Upper West Side was spectacular.) And then it dawned on me what the book was truly about: a love between a parent and a child. I won’t ruin the book for you, although I’m not sure that’s possible because it has no miraculous climax, no closure tied neatly with a bow. It is simply about the discovery of the layers of connection between a father and his daughter, imperfect beings, trying to bring love, ritual and meaning to their lives.

Reading the book made me miss my kids, some are away this summer and some are home. But it also made me miss the younger versions of them, the versions I failed to savor, because I, unlike our heroine, cannot travel back in time. What’s done is done. Tonight I am filled with regret for all the opportunities I neglected that I will never get back. I am also filled with hope for all the ways I might choose to do things differently tomorrow and the day after. The best novels remind us that we all live at the intersection of regret and hope.

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I went back to sleep this morning after my alarm went off because it’s the last time for probably a year I’ll be able to do that. My kids are coming home from camp tomorrow and I’m feeling a little sad about it. Don’t get me wrong – I love my kids more than anything in the world (including chocolate) and would do anything for them, literally ANYTHING. And that’s the problem, right? I would do anything and I actually do anything for them, which means when they’re not home I get a break. And boy has it been nice to have a break. My husband diligently emails our kids every single morning, feeling terribly guilty if he misses a day. Not me – no guilt there.

People ask me if I miss my kids while they’re at camp. The honest answer? Not really. I am so productive when they’re gone. I get so much work done. My brain is cleared to think big, interesting thoughts and have big, interesting conversations. But really, it’s the feeling that I’m not constantly rushing that I love most – I’m not rushing when I shower; I’m not rushing when I go pee in the middle of the day; I’m not rushing when I have a glass of wine at night; I’m not rushing when I walk down the supermarket aisle.

My mom used to say that sometimes she found parenting really boring. And God, am I grateful every day for that statement because she gave me permission to feel ambivalent about being a parent some days. Not ambivalent about the existence of my children – they bring me greater joy than anything else in the world, causing me to laugh harder, cry longer and love bigger than anything else – but ambivalent about what I have to do as their parent. The shitty tasks like going through their messy desks, the enraging tasks like washing their dishes left in the sink, the depressing tasks like carrying their crap upstairs, again. And yes, I know what you’re going to say – just don’t do it. Leave the messy desks and the dirty dishes and the left items on the stairs. But I can’t help myself – I both want to do it and feel annoyed about it.

My daughter called me last week with one week left of camp to tell me she’d hurt her ankle at gymnastics. It was a year to the day that my son called me from camp to say he’d hurt his knee. And while I knew I was supposed to express my concern about how she was feeling, in all honesty, I was pissed, really pissed. I told her in a tone bordering on lethally furious that I’d spent all last fall taking her brother to orthopedist’s appointments and now, if she didn’t get better, I was going to have to do the same with her. She apologized profusely (as if she’d gotten injured on purpose) because I was so irate. Not my best parenting – let’s just say my empathy tank was running low, real low. I got off the phone and felt like crap, because I was honestly more pissed that I’d have to deal with her injury than concerned about her injury. More annoyed about interrupting my fall work schedule (again) than worried about how she was feeling.

And mostly, I think I was angry that my freedom during the summer was coming to an end – her injury (which please God is minor) was a signal that my time putting myself first was over and we are returning to our regularly scheduled programming. There was that ambivalence again, rearing its head. And the problem with ambivalence is that it forces you to sit in the gray areas, a zone that I’m profoundly uncomfortable inhabiting. Give me good old black and white any day of the week. But that’s the craziest thing about raising kids – the feeling of hugging their bodies is like a lifeblood but they can piss me off in 2 seconds flat. When they get off that bus tomorrow I will likely cry my eyes out with joy and relief to see their filthy, smiling faces. And then within 10 minutes they will undoubtedly do something so irritating I will wish I could send them back on the camp bus. Loving kids is like riding the highest, rustiest, bumpiest see-saw – amazing when you’re up high but so unpleasant when you bump back to earth.

But most importantly, in my waning hours before my kids come back, I am giving myself permission to truly feel my ambivalence, as untidy as it is, because it is also the place where I can parent most honestly. Not hiding or covering up that some things as a parent really suck and I am annoyed at having to do them. And the funny thing is, as my kids get older, I think they actually appreciate that authenticity – when I’m real with them, not in a scarring, traumatizing way but in a frank and human way. And weirdly, it makes us closer because I am loving them as my whole self, even the ambivalent parts.

So excuse me while I go drink my latte very slowly, finish the final pages of my novel, and linger over tonight’s dinner before I am thrust back into real life – a little resentful, very grateful, and already exhausted.

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Put the f*cking contact lens in your f*cking eye.

When I became a parent, I never imagined I would drop the F-bomb as much as I do. In fairness, when my kids were younger, it made far less regular appearances. Now that they’re teenagers, it is a very frequent visitor to the Bennett home.

The driver behind my profanity, deep-seeded impatience, took up residence in my home seemingly the minute I had my first kid. Not that I was ever considered a patient person, but having kids brought my impatience to the next level.

Aren’t you done with the bath yet? Don’t you want to get out of the swing now? Isn’t that enough time in the sandbox? Can you hurry up and tie your shoes? Can you walk faster? Why aren’t your teeth brushed?

For nearly 20 years, I’ve been rushing my kids from one task to another, annoyed that they can’t do things faster and more efficiently. The other night my 12 year old was getting ready for a party and was putting in contact lenses for the very first time. His older brother showed him how to do it and then sent him on his way. I tried to stay out of the proceedings, but as the clock ticked down and we were in danger of being late, I made my way into the bathroom to see if I could speed things along.

There’s my baby, my youngest child, working so hard to do something really difficult all by himself and what do I do (after a brief stint of patient suggestions)? I tell him to: “Put the f*cking contact lens in your f*cking eye.” Needless to say, that exclamation did absolutely nothing to help him get closer to his goal. In fact, it just slowed everything down and made him feel worse.

I truly wish I was the kind of person who could stand calmly by, murmuring words of encouragement while my kid tries for the millionth time to put in his contacts. But instead, I lose my shit.

However, one of the things I have improved in after two decades of parenting is quickly recognizing when I’ve cocked things up. I may not be awesome at controlling my reactions in the moment, but I’m an ace at spotting my need for a do-over in record time. And psychologists will say that often the repair, the do-over, is more important than getting it right the first time. See, I have research on my side!

Knowing that I’ve blown it (and will blow it again) I have a game plan for my frequent, impatient mistakes:

1. I go back and apologize as soon as it feels like a good moment.

“I’m really sorry I shouted at you while you were trying to put in your contacts.”

2. I own the way(s) I messed up in a very specific way.

“It was not all that helpful that I shouted while you were trying hard to do something new and difficult. I really sucked in that moment”

3. I ask him what I could have done differently.

Spoiler alert: “Get out of his room.”

What don’t I do?

• I don’t promise I will never do it again, because knowing myself as well as I do, I will likely do it again tomorrow or next week.

• I don’t use humor to brush it under the rug, but I do use a humorous tone as a way to get into the conversation.

• I don’t get defensive when he tells me he wants me to get out of his room. I deserve that response – I didn’t earn a spot next to him while he struggled with his lenses.

To all of you beating yourself up for the ways you’re losing it as the clock ticks down on 2022, you are not alone. I am right there beside you, dropping f-bombs and pissing off my kid. But we always get a do-over – some of us just need them more of them than others…Happy New Year!

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Last week I was at the local diner with my 12 year old and over our plates of eggs and grilled cheese, he turned to me and asked: If people find out God doesn’t actually exist, don’t you think they’ll be really pissed? It was one of those moments when I thought – I love kids this age. They come out with the most fascinating questions and observations, seemingly out of the blue. Yes sometimes, they are pains in the ass, but other times they are so awesome.

A couple of days later, life in tweendom got even more interesting. I attended an interview with Judy Blume and a screening of the new movie version of Are you there God? It’s me Margaret. After 53 years, this beloved and groundbreaking love letter to puberty finally got its cinematic incarnation and it’s absolutely lovely. But the true moment of inspiration that night was hearing Judy Blume reflect on why she wrote this book.

Judy described wanting to write characters that would truly honor kids, explaining that when she wrote Margaret no one seemed to know how to write characters this age. She went on to passionately explain how they are human beings who deserve our respect. Both her original book and the new film do exactly that: honor kids on this twisting, murky journey.

After I heard Judy speak, Cara (my co-host on The Puberty Podcast) and I recorded an episode about the book, the movie and a new documentary about Judy Blume. I’ll be honest – I got really choked up recounting Judy’s words because to me, they are the holy grail of all the work we do supporting kids through adolescence. So it got me thinking, in what ways can I truly honor the kids in my life? As an ode to Judy Blume, I’ve recommitted myself to three principles for caring for kids riding the tidal waves of adolescence:

1. Remember kids’ humanity. In our culture, tweens and teens are so often derided and the punchline to mean jokes. Sometimes when we’re recounting their disrespect towards us, we are disrespectful to them in return, mocking them; shutting them down; letting our exasperation get the better of us. But in those moments, I’m reminding myself to take a deep breath and remember that they are human beings who need my love and my patience, not unkindness or sarcasm.

2. Approach with curiosity. The common narrative is that kids are not interested in anything except their phones and social media; that they don’t read books and are generally self-centered. And yes, there is some truth to that. But they’re also freaking awesome if we give them the space to be. The stuff that comes out of their mouths, while at times harsh or critical, also belies laser sharp observational skills. Their jokes might be wildly inappropriate, but also offer some pretty great insights into where their minds are traveling these days. Instead of judging what they watch on TikTok or dismissing questions that on the surface seem irrelevant, I’m getting curious rather than shutting down.

3. Really listen. Often, I only actually listen to my kids when something is wrong: they’re injured on the sports field; they’re struggling in a class; they’re upset with a friend. But what if I begin to truly listen when there isn’t a crisis? What if I tune in when there are quiet sparks of wondering or meandering through seemingly mundane questions of the day? I want to retrain my antennae so they’re not only up when there’s trouble on the horizon, but also when there’s a fleeting moment of meaning or connection I can find with my kid.

   Thanks for reading Vanessa Kroll Bennett! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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I know we’re all tired. Our fuses are short and our days are long. Life is so complicated and our culture is becoming ever more complex. But I don’t want to turn around some day and wish I’d done it differently. (I already feel that way about my kids’ toddler and grade school years.) I want to do better before it’s too late. So I’m pulling myself off my phone or away from my desk or off the couch to create moments with my kids. I’m putting my exhaustion and exasperation to the side and following Judy Blume’s lead to honor the adolescents in my life, to recognize their humanity. I don’t know if there is a God, but at least there’s Judy.

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I woke up with pine needles in my hair the morning after our magical (and exhausting) last visiting day at Camp Walden, my daughter’s childhood home. In the blink of an eye (and an endless slog through COVID), my kid had reached the final seven weeks of camp that were several years in the making. She and her friends had spent the school year planning, songwriting, and dreaming of what this summer would be – I prayed it would be everything she hoped. Now we were here to witness the climactic reality.

We walk down the shade-dappled, dusty road toward our kid and spot her radiant face in the chaotic crowd of families; joy shimmers off her being like fairy dust, her smile impossibly wide. From that moment and all day long, she and her friends bound through camp, teary-eyed and ebullient, singing constantly, braids swinging. Anyone in their wake, youngest camper or oldest counselor, receives an enveloping bear hug.

The girls proudly show us around their bunk, an homage to teendom, festooned with garish posters and silly photographs; discarded wet bathing suits and crumpled towels abandoned like candy wrappers on the wood floor. Rainbow colored toiletries occupy every inch of the shallow shelves over their beds and heaps of dirty sneakers claim the remaining floor space. They are blissful in their mess. They are enchanting and enchanted.

I went to Camp Walden too. Years swimming in the lake, playing on the sports fields, singing in the dining hall tattooed unfettered joy on my heart. It thrills me to see my kid euphoric in a place that means so much to me. But there is no comparison of experiences because frankly, she is doing it better. I don’t mean better in the typical way. I know joy and meaning are not a competition. I mean better in the most existential and spiritual of ways. She is somehow present in this place, in this moment, in this beatific bubble of camp in a way I never was. She and her friends are literally sucking the marrow out of every single second.

So on this final day, I borrow her astounding ability to savor every moment. When we swim together in the lake, I hug her strong body while trying to keep us afloat in the cool waters. While we the parents sing songs writtten to honor our kids, I look into my daughter’s beaming face and try to memorize this very snapshot in time. As we canoe to the middle of the lake and stop paddling, I let the sun warm my thighs while her storytelling turns us in circles.

The day goes by too quickly and all too soon, we are back on the dirt road, hair in wet ponytails, dirt between our toes, saying our teary goodbyes. My daughter pulls away from our hug to look me in the eye and say: Mommy, thank you for sharing this special place with me. (FYI, those are words I would never have uttered at 15.) I look at her in awe and respond: Thank you for taking this gift and making it into something even more special.

I always say that kids are our best teachers. And I mean it. With their laugh-inducing honesty and their gobsmacking insights, I constantly learn from my kids. But in this case, my daughter wasn’t teaching me a small lesson, this was secret-of-life level stuff. She was my sacred guide for how to wring out every drop of sweetness life has to offer, schooling me on how to inherit something great and make it astounding, if only for a summer.

Our family spent a dreamy last day in the Walden woods, but my daughter taught me a lesson as timeless as the towering pines above us.

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