Please Stop Talking
When I first started brainstorming what to write about for this month’s post, Gina (my behind the scenes partner in crime) thought it might be funny to ask my kids what my top five most annoying qualities were. “Funny for you,” I told her, “one of your two kids can’t even talk yet!”
But I was curious, so I asked them and that’s pretty much where the funny part ended for me.
It turns out I have so many annoying qualities, my kids had trouble narrowing the list down to just five.
I snap my fingers and call that dancing. I make strange facial expressions when I’m writing and sometimes when I’m just walking around (probably writing in my head). I stop at yellow lights. I won’t let anyone else push the grocery cart. I have an embarrassing “mom jog” that I do when I’m crossing the street. And I treat our dog, George, like my favorite child.
News flash: After this list, George is my favorite child.
If I learned anything from the experiment, it’s that I’m well rounded in the ways I annoy my kids. But despite the lack of consensus, there was one quality that made everyone’s list, something I’d always considered a virtue. Call it my obsessive positivity, my inability to commiserate, my intolerance for complaining, but it has been brought to my attention (not for the first time) that I need to retire my pep talks and gratitude lectures.
Rainbow after the storm (A visual pep talk. Can’t help myself).
I doubt I’m alone in wanting my kids to look on the bright side when life gets hard, though perhaps other moms are more successful in making that happen than I have been.
Whenever my kids are having trouble with friends or school or life in general, it is my nature, perhaps even an uncontrollable impulse to offer a quick fix. “It’s just one grade. You’ll do better next time.” “I never liked that (insert mean friend’s name) anyway.” And when all else fails, “You have so much to be grateful for!” Historically, if I talked long enough, I’d get a hug and a half-hearted smile, which I took to mean success—mission accomplished. In hindsight, I’m pretty sure the smile and the hug were just the quickest way to get me to stop talking.
The realization came to me last May when my daughter Lucy had bunion surgery. The procedure was painful and required her to be on crutches for most of the summer. For six weeks, Lucy was not permitted to shower or put any weight on her foot. This meant relying on others (aka me) to make and bring her food, to help her bathe and dress and to assist her up and down the stairs to the couch where she sat for most of the day.
The long recovery was nothing short of a nightmare for Lucy, my most social and independent child—if only because it required her to spend 99% of her time with her mom.
After a few weeks, I noticed her energy and mood sink. She cried more and struggled with her friends, who visited frequently, but were, for the most part, busy enjoying their summer months outside.
Lucy post-surgery. Still smiling because: drugs!
I reminded Lucy that the surgery had to be done, that the pain she normally experienced living with the bunion would no longer exist, and that a few weeks on crutches wasn’t the end of the world—at least she had a foot! No matter what I said, Lucy’s mood failed to improve. In fact, the more I tried to cheer her up, the more she wanted to pummel me with her crutches.
“Mom. Please stop talking.” she said. “You’re just making me more determined to be miserable.”
What she said made sense. It reminded me of how I feel when my husband tries to reassure me that Donald Trump isn’t going to destroy the world, a feat he seems poised to accomplish by the year’s end. I think our reasons for being overly positive are the same —perhaps we are both afraid the other will lose hope.
After Lucy offered her feedback on the utility of my pep talks, I had to ask myself why it was so hard for me to accept my children’s pain, to commiserate with them without dismissing their feelings in favor of a tidy solution. For me, at least, the answer lies in my own fear of seeing my kids suffer or fail. When they inevitably face disappointment, rejection, loneliness, heartbreak, or even post-surgical self-pity, I am reminded of how powerless I am to save anyone from the big bad world. And a question always lingers in my mind.
If I acknowledge that life is unfair and depressing and lonely, will my kids believe me when I tell them it is also exhilarating and joyful and full of beauty?
It occurs to me now that denying my kids the time and space to cry and sulk and complain at the end of a bad day—or a bad summer in Lucy’s case— only makes them feel more alone and broken for failing to see the world through my rose-colored glasses. And when I offer a quick fix or a pep talk, perhaps I am sending the wrong message—one that tells them some emotions are simply off limits.
I am attempting, with mixed results, to listen to my kids more than I talk and to sit through those uncomfortable pauses without filling the silence with unwanted advice. I’m not sure if this new approach helps any more than my pep talks did, but it has allowed my kids to talk about their struggles more openly and move through their feelings with less shame.
Starbucks: a much-preferred alternative to the pep talk.
Turning off my problem-solving mom brain hasn’t been easy. In fact, it’s just about the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do as a parent.
I keep waiting for one of the kids to ask me for advice or even better—recall some bit of wisdom they remember from one of my earlier pep talks, but I’m zero for two on that front.
These days, I’m still in charge of the grocery cart and my crazy facial expressions are in full bloom—(no doubt with all those lectures I’m not allowed to give). But I’m doing my best to hold space for my kids on the bad days and saving my lectures for the dog.
George giving me a slimy pep talk.