I have taken to using an analogy to describe my growing suspicion about the truth of my evolving role as a parent. I may have mentioned it in earlier blogs, but I'm about to beat it to death in this one. :-)
You know that awful Olympic sport, Curling...? The one that seems to be the TV stations' favorite filler during the olympics when no other actual SPORT is on at the moment? Curling, to the uneducated me, combines all the funnest elements of shuffleboard and sweeping your house. Basically, one person sends the granite stone, aka "the rock" (a big disky kind of object) zooming down the ice path while his or her compatriots sweep the ice madly in front of the rock, trying to guide it to a given spot down the road. Sometimes the rock hits other rocks and alters its course, which then seems to cause frantic sweeping and yelling of commands from the rock launcher, aka "skip".
So.
I've decided my current role as a parent is to launch the rock, aka teenager, down the path of life, and swoop around it, sweeping madly to try and help keep it, er, her, relatively on course. Sometimes the rock, er, teenager, slams into other rocks and changes course, which elicits much consternation from the skip, er, mother and further frantic sweeping to adjust course.
BUT. Ultimately that rock is heading down the course the skip shoved it on, and it's pretty much all over except the frantic sweeping and a bit of yelling here and there.
My two rocks, er, daughters, took off down that course almost without warning. And, frankly, that launch seemed to coincide with the biofather's inexplicable decision to check out of our world for 7 months starting, essentially, January 2011. Once they started living here full time, their confidence and personalities just seemed to soar... and off they went, leaving their skip (yes, me) searching frantically for her broom (yes, I know what I just said).
I've told my attorney, the counselor trying desperately to focus the biofather on the real issues and secure some sort of "reunification", the psychologist assessing my/our parenting skills, and pretty much anyone else involved in the situation that the bus has left... and there is plenty of room on it for positive contributors, BUT, it's well on it's way, with or without the rest of us. Smart adults will actually jump ON the bus rather than try to stand in front of the bus and expect it to stop and reset to when it was just a little van.
The forward momentum has had fits and starts, of course. The PCS, the issues on the old swim team, occasional biofather related disruptions that actually affected the girls (missed school or practices for "counseling" or other command performances, the early disruption when he first began appearing at events again, a few bombed tests here and there caused by anger/stress related to interactions with him...)... all have periodically caused the bus to backfire. (Wait, I'm mixing metaphors now... caused the rock to scrape? Caused the rock to briefly alter course? Maybe I need to put the rock on the bus or something...)
Anyway, I'd love nothing more than to have the biofather sweeping along with us, on the bus. Unfortunately, he has chosen to run alongside the rock, yelling incoherently and accusing the skip of turning the rock against him.
As BiM's decisions related to academics and athletics become more important (i.e. should she take a full slate of upper level classes... to wit... AP European History, Honors Chem, Honors Alg II, Honors Spanish and Honors Eng, or should she heed the Honors English teacher's doom and gloom warning that "if *I* had a daughter *I* would not let her take both Honors Eng and AP Euro" and take her 600 SAT verbal score as a 14 year old and go to AP English as an 11th grader, where presumably the teacher will not be so...negative...?) the conversations become far less one sided and far more interactive, and it becomes increasingly obvious that BiM has a good handle on her own mind and how it works. (For example, She wants to prove the teacher wrong, but realizes she does not care enough to warrant the hassle or the risk of taking a subjective course lorded over by a teacher who didn't want her in her class. Could she do it? Sure. Should she? Nah. She doesn't want to go Ivy (which is fine with us) and none of us at this house have our personal images and self-esteem wrapped up in the issue of what school either child attends for college, so... )
Now, before I get fileted for not caring enough about academics, let me be clear... yes, academics are important. But they are not, alone, what gives a person soul, or depth, or happiness. It doesn't matter how much STUFF a person knows if they know nothing about themselves or the world around them. In my opinion... And, since this is my blog and my children.... lol.
I think as they race down the ice, er, path of teenagerhood towards adult humanness, there have been two HUGE turning points in their personalities and development. The first is the aforementioned biofatherus disappearus. The second is the Team DiPaolo unanimous decision to change swim teams. The girls had asked on numerous occasions in the year(s) prior if they could go to Bolles or somewhere else for club swimming. At times BiM, especially, had mentioned not wanting to swim anymore if it was for the old team. While their times continued to trend in a positive direction, their experiences and attitudes and overall happiness were increasingly trending negatively.
The run up to the state series last fall was... difficult. The state series itself was...interesting. The culture of "play time" and "lip service" was wearing on us. I read somewhere that we teach our children not to trust their instincts... and that teaching them that actually leads to lots of problems down the road that could be avoided. The philosophy of preserving the girls' instincts governed my parenting long before I read it, and the girls' bullsh*t detectors remain fully operational. We also operate under the belief that, at some point, if you've given a situation or a person enough opportunity to change or improve, and it has not, then it is time to make a choice: either give up and accept it the way it is, or move on. The girls, amazingly, are better at it than I am (which is why *I* am the only one who still feels bad about the situation with the biofather... everyone else has long moved on and left me in the confusing place of being the target who feels bad that the attacker has screwed everything up and is missing out on everything).
Anyway, the girls were ready to move on from the team before I was ready to accept the inevitable. They are fearless... it didn't occur to them people would look askance, and, in their minds, if people DO look askance, then those people become irrelevant. The girls know what they want and, apparently, you are either a supportive part of them achieving it or you are invisible. People pay shrinks thousands of dollars to try and achieve that internal equilibrium, lol.
So, move they did, after several long discussions of possible ramifications and reactions and future scenarios. BiM, especially, never felt accepted or liked by the older swimmers on the other team. LiM loved her friends, but hated the pervasive "play time" atmosphere and didn't like how older kids treated BiM. Neither child appreciated being mocked for wanting to challenge themselves. As a parent, I never felt comfortable leaving the girls in the hands of the coaching staff, as their lack of oversight, awareness in general, and professionalism scared the hell out of me.
It took all of a single practice at North Florida for the smiles to start coming back on the girls' faces.
Fast forward three months and the difference is profound. Confidence, attitude, comfort level, energy and enthusiasm for the team and the sport.... all off the charts. Actually having a coaching staff they trust and respect is a Godsend. While it is wonderful that their times have dropped, the more important thing to us is that they are now in a program with a plan and with structure, where they are accepted in all their quirkiness (Um, BiM...) and sensitivity (that would be LiM) and where I feel 100% comfortable dropping them at practice and going for a run, or sitting at the pool reading with no clue what lane they are in or what they are doing.
(I feel like I should insert a curling or bus reference here, lol, to keep the theme going....)
As the girls' rocks go hurtling down the ice and we go sweeping madly next to them, occasionally having to leap over them as they careen off a stray rock and change direction slightly, I really do feel like our greatest contribution as parents from here on out is to stay out of their way. I'm here for guidance, and consultation, and perspective, and to do laundry and pack lunches and dispense hugs as needed, and occasionally remind the hurtling rocks of the boundaries of their path as long as *I* am still sweeping it....
So there you have it. Parenthood boils down to giving your child a good shove on the ice and staying on, rather than under, the bus.
...that's my why, what's yours?
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