Simplicity Parenting (20 page)

In their consistency, rhythms establish trust. They offer children a sense of order … the joy of anticipation and the security of things to be counted on, every day. Busyness, change, and improvisation will still have keys to your house, but they won’t entirely rule the day. Not when rhythms are honored. Consistency will gain a foothold. And as you consider adding new rhythms to your family life, remember: In addition to consistency, the best daily life rhythms offer connection.

I’m not suggesting you schedule “group hug” breaks throughout the day. (More power to you, though, if you can manage it.) What I am suggesting is that connection builds through small, unplanned moments. Cleaning up after supper is just something you do as a family; no big deal. Not exactly a well-oiled machine, but somehow—with a lot of reaching over and around, different styles and speeds of engagement, the occasional crashes and heroic saves—the job gets done. It is when your six-year-old son, playing to a full audience, first made up his signature robot dance. When the baby actually sits quietly, transfixed by the motion all around her.

Relational Credits

Music is as much about the spaces between notes as it is about the notes themselves. As a (frustrated, would-be) guitar player, I know the importance of the pause. As you’re coming down off one note and preparing
for the next, or when you hold a suspended seventh, the space is absolutely critical to the piece. In parenting, too, it is often in the intervals—the spaces between activities—that relationships are built.

Here is the simplest example, an exchange that, especially for boys, is likely familiar to you. You pick your son up from school, and he’s barely in the car when you ask: “How was school?” “Okay.” “Just okay?” “It was okay, regular.” “What happened; what did you do?” “Nothing.” We parents find this stinginess in conversation maddening. But wait. Later that night, as he’s lying on the living room rug, his head propped on the dog’s back, he may be more inclined to turn to you and share more: “Hey Mom, you know my new science teacher, Mr. Elway? Today he said that I could do my project on black holes, which is so awesome, because that’s
exactly what
I wanted to do it on!”

Moments of pause, when nothing much is going on. Or the passage, the interval between one activity and the next. Ironically, it’s often not the activities themselves but the moments leading up to them, or away from them, that provide windows into how our kids are doing. Unfortunately, some kids have very few pauses in their daily lives, going from one activity to the next without a chance to process their thoughts or feelings. Or a child’s parents might be so busy and overscheduled that they present a moving target, unavailable for these unplanned moments of connection.

A sense of rhythm in the home can increase these moments of pause. There’s something about being there consistently for kids that allows them to “pick their spots” and open up to you when nothing much is happening. You’re familiar, consistent, and predictable.

There are two points here, and they’re intertwined. One point is that by being a parent who commits to regularity—to books every night, dinners together, the winter walk, the “favorites things,” the regular notes of the day and week—you become, by extension, a parent kids can be with, doing nothing. I sometimes think of it as “the old shoe phenomenon.” As such a mom or dad, you prove yourself regular, trustworthy. By those habitual commitments you are saying, “Yes, I may be ‘an old shoe,’ but I
am your
parental old shoe.”

The other point is that these moments of doing nothing—together—are critical. I remember in one of my workshops a mother mentioned that she couldn’t imagine being alone for any period of time with her father. Even as an adult she wondered what she would do if she needed to take a long car trip with her dad, or if they somehow found themselves in a rowboat together for a couple of hours. There was nothing scary or threatening about her father, she was quick to add. But despite all those years of growing up in the same house, he was a stranger to her, and she didn’t know what they would have to talk about without other people or distractions around them.

Simplification establishes an unspoken emphasis on relationship. By eschewing some of the distractions that could easily consume our time and attention—limitless media, activities, and
stuff
—we leave our emotional door open for our loved ones. We acknowledge the claim they’ve already staked on our attention. Simplicity establishes a connection with our children that is “bankable.” By that I mean that we have “relational credits.” In difficult times we can count on, and draw from, this connection.

A deep comfort in one another’s company is what we look for in family; it’s what we want our children to feel. A sense of ease that doesn’t depend on a shared interest, activity, or conversation. This reassuring connection is often effortless when they’re young. We are, after all, the family architect; we build its structures, we set its emotional climate. As our kids grow toward independence, however, there are more opportunities for hits and misses in our emotional timing and connection with one another. A father may find he hasn’t too much to offer in the depth of his daughter’s “horse phase,” when all her thoughts, conversations, and dreams are equine. Likewise, the son that Mom used to play Wiffle ball with is now playing a bass guitar in the garage. If she opens the door to look in, he and the four other guys (one with multiple piercings) will turn and say, in unison, “’Sup?”

How your child (and you as their parent) fares during their adolescent years is determined by the years that proceed the first rush of hormones. It’s at least partially predicated on those moments of pause that you’ve shared as they grew up, those relational credits that you’ve built up. Such moments of security and ease form a well-worn groove of connection. What you hope is that the relational habit life you’ve established together continues right through adolescence. The bond is habitual, unconscious. It is just the way you are together, always have been.

Does hanging out together when they’re young make their adolescence a breeze? Hardly. Not even close. Adolescence is a developmentally turbulent time, and it can be intense, for teens and for their parents. But relational credits, the emphasis you’ve put on being there for them, and with them, can make things easier for you both, during their adolescence and other difficult times. Here are two examples from my recent experience.

A father and his daughter came to see me. The daughter was having some problems academically, but as we were talking, a completely different issue surfaced. The girl, Lily, was in seventh grade. It seems that in her small school community there had recently been two parties with no adults present, at which sexually explicit “games” had been played. Lily mentioned that it was she who had spoken to her father about these parties, and she had told him how uncomfortable she and several other kids had felt. Lily’s father contacted some other parents, and the parties had been stopped. Many conversations between participating kids and their parents had taken place, and the whole thing had been handled without Lily being outed as the one who had first gone to a parent.

As Lily told me about this I said how impressed I was that she had shown the courage to talk to her father like that. “Well,” Lily said, “my dad and I, we’re pretty tight. I mean, I knew that he would listen. I knew that he would hear me out at least; he always does that. And I just kinda thought that if he could figure out a way to work things out, he would help.” In fact, Lily’s father had been listening quietly while she described the whole incident to me. Listening—waiting, pausing—seemed to be something he had made a habit of. So would it always play out like this between Lily and her father? I don’t know. But I was certain that no matter what,
she
was certain her father would listen to her. Considering what can come a young girl’s way at this time in her life, that certainty is a very powerful thing.

One other point about Lily and her father. A woodworker, Lily’s dad had his workshop in the basement. He wasn’t always there when Lily and her brother got home from school, but whenever he was, the door to the basement was open. Both kids knew that they could come down and talk to him as he carved or sanded. He would sometimes stop, turn off his machines, and just sit opposite them at the old shop picnic table. But more often the talk was just part of the flow of the afternoon, as much a part of it as the work. I mention this because we
sometimes feel we have to create a “sacred space” (dim the lights, cue the Gregorian chants) for communicating with our kids.

Not so. Anyplace will do; the sawdust is optional. The point is to create space in one’s time and attention. Your intention, and your commitment to it, will make that space sacred for you and your children.

Sometimes it helps just to remind children that such a safe space exists for them. One afternoon a few weeks ago my older daughter was coming home after school. As she walked down the driveway toward the house she began to cry. By the time my wife reached her and held her the tears and words were spilling out. “Unbearable!” I heard as I walked over to sit near them. It had been an awful day at school. There was so much noisy “yammering” in class that they had not had a second recess, and she had not heard the story, or had a chance to finish her painting.

Isn’t it tempting to jump in with a solution? Absolutely tempting to quiet their quivering little chins, and dry their eyes, with a failsafe, can’t-miss solution. But to do so consistently says “I’m in control of your life” and “I know how you feel.” We aren’t. And we don’t, really. And while it may seem a comforting thought to “know how they feel,” it also denies them their own feelings.

Soon both sisters were playing, reclaiming the day somewhat in their own way. But when the subject of school came up at dinner, our eldest was clearly still upset. “Darling, whatever happens at school or anywhere, you also, always, have a place here, at home. We are here, your mom and I, and your sister.” The tears came again, but she jumped up to hug me, relieved. I wasn’t “fixing” her day, I was just reminding her that she had a safe place, a haven. I mentioned to her that I was going to fly the next day to Chicago, “one of the biggest airports in the country.” I told her that as I was walking through this busy airport, bustling with noise and people hurrying here and there, I would probably think of her and her mother and sister at home. “Really?” she asked. “Yes,” I said. “That picture is with me wherever I go.”

My friend Laura’s daughter, Alison, is fifteen. She’s a bright, wonderful girl, very much loved by those of us who know her. When I ran
into Laura recently we talked about the teenage years. For all of her charm out in the world, Laura said, Alison could be quite rude and hostile at home, especially toward her. Rolled eyes, monosyllabic responses, straight down the “Adolescent Behavior” checklist. Alison’s nastiest comments seemed to be reserved for her mother. “You know what’s strange, though?” Laura asked, lowering her voice to a whisper. “At dinner she can look at me as though I’ve sprouted a second head, and still, almost every night, she plops down on the couch in front of the fire with me, her head in my lap!”