(Quick aside: I actually said “that sucks” in front of a toddler at a photography workshop and got my ass handed to me by another attendee. I was genuinely confused. Did she think I said the other word that happens to rhyme with “suck”? Nope. She was truly outraged by suck. Oh well. Clearly, I’ve had no intention of learning any kind of lesson from that critique.)
I am trying to suck more in front of my kid.
(Yes, yes, there’s a certain glee I get from the provocative phrasing here but I’ll stop there before I wear out the shock value.)
She’s a perfectionist and, despite being only 13, constantly compares herself to others much older than herself. As her mum, I’m often in a position of offering her advice or insight. As a 47-year-old, I’ve obviously learned some things along the way too on how to navigate the world and she sees that in action every day as I go to work, pay the bills, and maintain a household. Both of these realities mean that comparing herself to me, as she often does as an only child who spends half of her time with me, brings her up short. (In her eyes, at least.)
As adults, especially as we head into mid-life, we’re usually very busy leveraging our relatively well-refined talents and knowledge both personally and professionally. From the perspective of a child - and I remember this distinctly myself - adults can come off as “finished” humans. We know so much more than them that it seems that we know it all. We spend all day engaged in doing things using that knowledge while they spend all day in the pursuit of acquiring it. Not that we ever really stop learning or acquiring knowledge, but (if we’re paying attention) those nuggets tend to arrive as a natural result of adulting vs. the very obvious and intentional reality of a child who spends all day in a classroom.
Our kids also rarely see our mistakes. Either they’re not around for that time when you lost your cool in a meeting and blurted out something you regretted (just me?) or we don’t want to burden them with our shame, so we deal with these things outside of our relationship with them. They rarely see us stumble and falter. In some cases that’s how it should be. In other ways, it can be detrimental.
It all creates a false perception of adults as all-knowing beings that rarely make mistakes and deprives them of witnessing our humility and resilience so that they can learn to model the same.
For a perfectionist child, it’s a major barrier. Why try something if you don’t already know how to do it and aren’t already good at it? How will you cope when you fail to live up to your own high expectations of yourself? What does that mean about you?
And for a teenager? Paralyzing. Now, not only will you potentially let yourself down but you’ll be judged for it. People will be looking at you and witnessing your insufficiencies!
All of which to say, I’ve been looking for ways to intentionally and openly model learning, faltering, failing, and persevering, and doing so with a lighthearted spirit.
Which is how we ended up in twice weekly Taekwondo lessons together. And it’s delivered in so many ways for both of us; some of which I imagined, others of which I didn’t.
We’re both starting from the same place: total beginners. I’ve never done any martial arts (unless you count the odd kickboxing class). We’re learning the same skills on the same cadence. She does get to see that there are some things that come more easily to me than her but she also gets to see many instances that the reverse is true. The kickboxing has turned out to be helpful, granted, and my legs have always been strong so I find kicks to be pretty easy to pick up. But blocks, the coordination and memorization involved for certain forms, and even just memorizing the tenants of Taekwondo and student oath? I SUCK. The number of times she had to drill me on both of the latter before I could remember the damn things is plain embarrassing. We’d be walking the dog, she would pop-quiz me, and I’d be like “Uhhhhhhhhh….” as my brain froze. Meanwhile, she had it all memorized in drill-sergeant fashion after a couple of tries.
(Don’t even get me started on perimenopausal brain fog.)
I’m not the top dog for once. Seems like an obvious point but it’s an important one. How often do our kids see how we show up when we’re not in charge? On the mat I’m not the one with the most knowledge, I’m not the one giving directions or offering guidance, I’m very much in a position she’s usually in our relationship dynamic: the student. I love that she gets to realize that we all have different roles to play in different circumstances, and at any time in our lives.
I mess up. Seeing me try something and execute imperfectly, try again, and keep having to keep trying to deliver what the teacher is asking of us, is good for her. She gets to make fun of me for my little squeals of frustration and see me laugh along with her at my ridiculousness. In return, I’ve seen her increasingly do the same. She still gets super embarrassed and internalizes even the smallest errors but I see little sparks of understanding when she finally nails it after several tries.
We help one another. It’s been a leveler. We encourage each other when we have to practice something and it’s hard. We hold one another accountable to the task at hand. In this space, we are each other’s supporters vs. the dynamic that exists off the mat where I’m almost permanently in support mode. I can’t deny that it’s also nice and a little freeing to be relieved of that somewhere in our relationship.
She gets to see women of many different ages learning a new skill. Since our classes are mixed skill levels and ages, we’re encountering all kinds of awesome ladies at different points in their journey. Two of the first people to greet us in class were Jackie and Carla, sisters in their 60s who took this up a couple of years ago as something to do together and to keep them in good physical shape. They’re now red/black belts. There’s also the other mom and teenage daughter pair in our Thursday class, just a belt above us. The rest of the class on Thursday is a mix of ages: teens, 20s, 30s, 40s… The message: you’re never too old to be the student.
I get to model social skills in the wild. So much of a teen’s life these days is lived through their phones, it has become increasingly more difficult for them to learn valuable social skills, and increasingly easier for them to avoid uncomfortable social situations altogether. I love technology, social media, and the internet. I’m definitely not anti any of it. But I do see that the prevalence of virtual worlds requires me as a parent to be more intentional about getting her exposed to these kinds of skills in the real world. When we showed up to our first lessons at Taekwondo, it was, of course, awkward to meet people and start conversations (although everyone was welcoming). Did I feel awkward? Hell yes. But I plowed into exchanging smiles, saying good evening, introducing us, and stumbling through early conversations anyway. I don’t expect her to feel the confidence to do this herself at 13 but I know she’s watching, absorbing, and taking mental notes about how to be in the world. I hope I’m showing if nothing else, that it might be awkward but it shouldn’t be scary.
I won’t deny that I also had a not-so-secret agenda for her to develop some self-confidence and stop physically shrinking from the world, hunched over with what comes across as a permanent sense of embarrassment that so many teenagers seem to model these days. My hope is that martial arts can give her proud ownership of the space which she occupies in the world, in all the ways in which that can come into being.
I’m also getting a lot out of this experience too.
I’m flexing muscles I don’t get to use very often anymore such as memorization, coordination, and mobility. As frustrating as it is that my brain and body don’t respond as quickly as they used to, I know the only way for that to get better is to build up those skills again by doing. I also love watching how other adults engage with her, seeing how different approaches land, and making mental notes on how I can use that to improve our relationship off the mat.
Two-ish months in (minus time out for travel and Holidays) and we just passed our test to be promoted from white belt to yellow/white belt. We tested on the same day and got promoted on the same day. We got to celebrate this win together, neither one of us more or less accomplished than the other. We’re not really in it for anything other than the experience but working toward a goal together felt great.
As always, my main takeaway from these experiences alongside her is that I’m in awe. She is courageous in the true sense of the word, fun, funny, and humble, all in ways that it took me decades to achieve. I love spending time with her like this, outside of our regular dynamic.
Sucking FTW.
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I absolutely love this post!
You’re a great writer, and even better mom.