Epiphany

Two less-than-ideal situations became the catalyst for a parental epiphany.

First, I took my girls to the zoo on Sunday. The weather was perfect: 72 degrees Fahrenheit, so the animals were out and about instead of panting in the dank coolness of their shelters. The girls were great on the long trip across town to get there. My five-year old kept me in conversation, and my littlest girl fell asleep in her car seat (which was perfect, since she was missing her afternoon nap to go to the zoo).

Shortly after we were admitted, however, I began to realize that it was going to be a rough day. Both girls are strong-willed and stubborn. The youngest wants to do everything she sees the oldest doing, and she's also right in the midst of the toddler's struggle to understand self, identity, and boundaries. So I was faced with two strong-willed, independent girls who wanted their own way, but wanted to go two different directions.

At one point, a boy was finding it fun to anger a horned goat by waving an empty white paper sack in its face. My oldest girl wanted to feed the goat, and she didn't understand my command to wait. So what happened? She tried to feed the goat while the boy was waving the paper sack, and the goat butted the rail, missing her hand by an inch. While I comforted her and tried to explain why the goat was angry and why she needed to listen, the littlest girl wandered off to feed the goats and sheep on the other side, out of our view.

And so the back-and-forth controlling of two girls at the zoo got to me... it really made me angry that they wouldn't listen, and each one would put herself in danger either by wandering out of sight or getting too near an animal's cage (e.g., putting fingers inside one animal's cage or another against explicit instructions to the contrary) or climbing barriers, benches, or monuments. We didn't stay at the zoo very long. Maybe an hour-and-a-half.

In the meantime, my wife had been out of town, camping for the past several days. She returned Sunday night/Monday morning at about 12:45 AM. It would have been nice to have her back if she hadn't come in like a tsunami.

She woke me up griping about this and that and a few other things, but mostly about not being able to open the trunk of her car. She and the seven ladies she went camping with had divided gear among their cars, and her trunk had been packed so full that the auto-release in the car didn't function.

And so she tried to access the trunk by letting down the back seats -- which would have been fine, but the latches were in the trunk. Also, she hadn't removed gear from the back seat. And inexplicably, a baby seat was still in her car. She stormed into the house to look for some extra key that would open the trunk. When I asked her for the key to the car, she shouted and stormed and griped some more because she and another of the ladies had already tried that. She handed over the key, though, and within two seconds, I opened the trunk.

She griped at me more about some other things that I can no longer recall. The point is, she was tired. I knew she was tired, but I was tired, too, and wasn't going to take much more abuse. In the midst of her griping, she asked whether I would take both girls in the morning -- one to daycare, the other to school. I agreed, not quite understanding how this was any different than what I'd been doing Weds-Fri last week.

I should note at this point that -- the zoo incident as an exception -- I tend to be a little more laid-back than my wife as far as the girls go. Morning routines and breakfast, for instance, were more-or-less pleasant affairs while my wife was away. Alarms would ring and go silent. I would turn the girls' light on and tell the oldest to get up and dressed while I took a shower. She would be more than accommodating, going the extra mile to get her little sister changed and dressed, too. We ate in relative peace at a normal pace, and then head out the door.

This does not resemble my wife's routine or harassing and haranguing our five-year old to get up, get dressed (clap, clap, clap)... she's in a hurry and has to get to work, work, work. All the while changing the two-year old and "getting her dressed," which apparently involves allowing the child to choose her own shirts and socks, picking out and putting on her own shoes, and allowing the child to select from an overwhelming number of choices.

So, my whole point is this: the more you try to control and micromanage your children, the more apt they are to resist, fuss, and/or make life more difficult than it needs to be. If you can relax a little, give them a little bit of room, and use gentle, infrequent reminders, I am certain you'll notice the difference in behavior.

Measuring success

Is it a good thing that we seem to measure success in terms of money, fame, and prestige? There seems to be an abundance of Hollywood-types, professional athletes, pop stars, CEOs, media moguls, and so on who have all of that. But are they really successful, and are they to be emulated? I don't count many of them among my heroes, anyway.

What would it be like if we measured success in terms of happiness: our own happiness and how much of that spills over into the lives of those who surround us? What if we factored in how close we come to living up to our dreams?

I don't know of any formulas to measure true success. I don't have specific examples or results to present as proof. My path in this world is based more on emotions and feeling than on exact science. But of all the people we read about in news stand magazines or see on television these days, I don't think there's a single one who I would be comfortable holding up to my children as a truly successful person, a model for them to emulate.

Maybe I'm confusing "successful" with "heroic." But I think the definition of success ought to include being a hero to somebody. . . your child, your partner, a friend or colleague, someone. And to be any kind of hero, you should be someone who it is worthwhile to emulate, to hold in high esteem.

The most successful people I know -- the ones I consider successful, anyway -- don't necessarily have a lot of money or assets, they're not well-known outside their tiny sphere of friends and family, but they're happy and true to themselves and live in such a way that is worthwhile to emulate and to hold up as an ideal.