I think I’m what some people call a natural-born-teacher. It’s in my blood; teachers sprout from my family tree for generations upon generations. It’s no surprise that as a parent, I’ve been an education task-master. You think preacher’s kids have it rough? Think about being a teacher’s kid. You’re constantly the guinea pig for lesson plans, you have access to the endless books and supplies and strategies constantly brought into your home, and more than anything else, you are your parent’s prize pupil.

Needless to say, I’ve taught my kids lots of things. Oh yes, we worked on letters and numbers and the alphabet. They were read to and sung to and taken on adventure after adventure. Lily and I spent hours creating our own reality tv cooking show; when I was in labor with my second child, three-year-old Lily could make french toast and show Grandma where I kept the coffee maker. She evolved into a perfectionista baking goddess who found Wednesday afternoon stress relief mixing butter, sugar, flour and vanilla into delectable bites of goodness. Cameron, now a teen, will spend hours in the kitchen leaving a trail of disaster in his wake, yet arise with a smile and display a dish that would rival an Iron Chef on Food Network.

We taught them to love all kinds of sports, to learn from traveling the world, to paint and draw and sculpt and build and design and tried to engage their every creative and educational curiosity. And now as they’re growing up and away and into their own lives, I find myself asking – did I teach my children to weed? Did I teach them to discover and evaluate and search deeply for what really matters in life?

Parents, teach your children to weed before it’s too late. Take them outdoors and teach them to look at the beauty around them. Show them the messiness of life’s landscape and remind them that they don’t have to bloom where they’re planted – they can change what they don’t like in life. Teach them that they can uproot, they can replant, and keep moving and trying and re-doing until they get it just right.

Teach your children that weeds are the ones that look like they’ll flower but won’t. That sometimes life gets sticky, and can unexpectedly crawl up the vines you’ve carefully trained. Teach them that weeds can be all at once beautiful and fluffy and then with one breath, with one small burst of air they will scatter into directions you never intended – or expected. It will never be perfect. Some weeds will come back; some will be gone forever. You get to choose.

Teach your children to weed – to put both knees in the soil, even when it’s muddy and full of manure. Teach them to get into the center of their life, to get dirty and not fear what’s in front of them.

Teach them to not always yank and pull randomly at life, but to think about what’s underneath, and what the bigger design for their life might be. There’s always unexpected beauty beneath the surface.

Stargazer lilies in my garden

Teach your children to pay attention, to delight in small discoveries in life, like tulips sprouting at the first sign of spring, or a lily straining to grow and share her exquisiteness – just like them.

Don’t wait too long to teach your children to weed – now’s the time. In the blink of an eye, neglected gardens become beds of weeds, requiring much more effort to put back in order. And if you feel like you’ve waited too long, don’t worry. Just do it. Starting is always the scariest part of it all, but if you don’t start now, then when?

Remember to take it one section at a time – take breaks. All those weeds didn’t all grow in one day – it will take awhile to get it the way you want it. Sometimes season after season it will keep coming back, and one day – if you keep at it – it will be gone. It’s OK to stop when you’re tired; self-care is an important skill to learn.

Finally, stop and admire your work. Make life pleasant – listen to the birds, fill a hummingbird feeder or watch the butterflies land on the flowers. Admire your hard work. Hug your children tightly, tell them you love them and watch them grow into amazing creatures. Your efforts will pay off, I promise.

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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He said to me the other day, “Mom, I don’t get it. Sometimes you’re totally chill, and then sometimes you want to know everything. You need to trust me. I’m not crazy, you know.”

That one got me thinking. Am I that inconsistent? Or is he just smart enough to see what’s really going on beneath the surface?

Parenting is sort of like going to battle without a plan. We start off as new parents overjoyed with the idea of life ahead, and for the most part, joy is the overriding emotion of my parenting experience.

And then life happens. Infants turn into toddlers, then third graders, thirteen year olds, and suddenly the teenage years smack us over the head when we weren’t looking. The skirmishes begin in full force.

Let the parenting battle begin-and parents, you’d better be ready.

Some days the plan of attack is subtle, but not without strife, to be sure. Get your homework done before video games, complete your chore list without complaining, and study for finals. That’s the easy stuff.

It’s the harder issues that lead to full engagement, wondering if a ceasefire will ever be possible. The ones that leave you with the ache in your gut. The ones that make you dive for the parenting handbook and leave you breathless with worry. The ones that you just need to ride out and trust that things will work themselves out.

Yesterday’s choice wasn’t one of those legendary philosophical decisions. For many people it would have been quite simple. It was normal kid stuff, things that maybe some parents don’t even blink at. But I do.

It really was about teenage decision making – trusting that his frontal lobe was keeping up with his intelligence. This is something I’ve been taking into consideration this year, now that he’s 15 and full of confidence.

Last summer, I had finally come to a place where I felt ok with him living away from home. I felt comfortable with his community, with his coaches, and with his friends. I felt like he was on a strong, health path. He was young – but he knew what he wanted.

Then came the phone call last August, when he broke his leg and I changed my ‘chill’ attitude. Suddenly, he was vulnerable again, and I fell into mamawolfe mode and all the doubts, the ‘proof’ that ‘things happen’, and now I’m caught in the mental battle of how far to let him go, how do I trust that he will be safe.

Watching the news sure doesn’t help – just last night I reminded him that if we listen to the stories, none of us should walk out of our house, light a firework or travel to a big city for the 4th of July.

Terrifying, if you think about it too hard. Terrifying to think about the battles going on in our world, let alone within the mind of a teenage boy full of hormones.

And this is where my angst set in, where I struggled with the parenting battle lines. What do you stand up for, what do you let slide? When do we trust that all those years of hand holding and teaching and boundaries pay off in their solid decision making? Where does the intersection of our own fears and our common sense lead us, when we come to a four-way stop and need to decide what is best for our child?

When do we let our kids just be kids, and push away all the fears – rational or irrational – and trust that everything will just be OK?

This is perhaps one of the most formidable parts about parenting – the struggle between throwing down the gauntlet, honoring the change in our children, recognizing the growth they’ve made from preschool to high school, and taking that deep breath, holding it for just a second, and releasing it with a quiet, “yes”.

Because when you think about it, the most indomitable parenting battles are really within ourselves, aren’t they?

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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“Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.”

– Zora Neale Hurston

Parenting teenagers is hard. No way around it. I’ve yet to meet a parent who will claim otherwise; oh yes, there are varying degrees of ‘hardness’, and we all have different struggles with our children. But the bottom line is, parenting  – if you do it right – requires a recipe of courage, persistence, patience, kindness, empathy, hope, prayer, and the belief that all things are possible.

I’m parenting teenager number two right now – his older sister is safely off to college and finding her way. One of the lovely aspects of having one child of each sex is just that –  enjoying the nuances that each one brings both due to and despite their gender.

Child number one – she hated to be alone. It was her worst type of cruel-and-unusual punishment.

Child number two – he loves it. Maybe it’s that he’s all at once so much like me, and at the same time, so much how I would like to be.

That makes parenting hard – to fault him for the very same parts of myself that crave introspection and quiet – the parts of him that test my patience, have my empathy and require hope, faith, and the belief in possibility.

And every day, because of my child, my soul crawls out from its hiding place.

Love catches me unaware like that.

And still, I keep trying.

Sometimes I end up sideways or crumpled in confusion.

Sometimes I get “it” right – and before I can even high-five myself – “it” morphs into something unexpected.

And through it all, I write “it” down. I photograph “it”, trying to somehow remember what it felt like and how I can capture it forever, the extraordinary ordinariness of our days that forces my soul outside of its hiding place for everyone to see.

Today I’m sharing an original piece on my favorite parenting web site, BonBon Break. I’d love it if you click over and read my Early Morning Love Note To My Son, and let me know what you think.

I kind of left my soul out there for you to take a look.

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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It was a normal Thursday afternoon. I pulled my red Prius into the garage after a long day at school, ready for the weekend. Our car ride chatter was nothing short of normal – with my teenage son, I’ve learned that some days are talking days, and some are best to be left quiet – and that words matter. Today we talked about the day, his classes, homework, and what he needed to do that night. As the radio clicked off and he swung his long legs onto the garage concrete, I heard him whisper, “Whoa, deja vu.”

“Whispers from your former life, bud,” I commented as I pulled my bulging bag of papers out of the back seat.

“No-not a former life, Mom. This has happened before. It’s the same thing,” he snapped back. Guess he’s not ready to  believe in past lives just yet.

“Seriously, Cam. When we have deja vu it’s you repeating what you’ve experienced in another time. It’s part of the Universe,” I patiently tried to persuade him.

“No, it’s not. I’ve done this before. In this life,” he shot back as the door closed behind him.

And we were done.

I’ve noticed that conversations with him require intense concentration. They are short, deliberate and to the point – or they’re not. Sometimes they’re full of hidden meaning, of twists of language, or simply a game of trying to appease my questions and get me out of the room.

As a writer and his parent, this does not satisfy my quest for stories, to use language to share emotions, to delve into the insides of his brain, or even to recount how he made his chicken/pasta concoction taste like something from a Food Network chef.

But it does start me thinking about words, and what happens when we focus on what we’re saying. In my classroom, I’m forever telling my 8th graders that English class is to learn to communicate – to use written and spoken language to understand each other, to share history, to create an understanding of the human experience.

I want my students AND my children to feel the urgency to use words to learn and move forward with the magic of life, and to always remember where we came from.

For writers, the written language is our sustenance. Moving pen on paper or fingers on a keyboard brings vigor to our veins and joy to our world. Writers teeter between words gushing out and over and tumbling down our bones as a waterfall carries the current, debris tossed in with beauty. We then sort and shift and question every single word, each letter becoming part of a canvas for our emotions and thoughts and stories. We can squeeze out language in the most excruciating fashion, hovering for days to capture that precise moment stuck in our minds and begging release into the world.

This consciousness of language, of purposefully and deliberately thinking about the words we put into the world, becomes at times both painful and pleasurable. Head down, we squint to see a story take shape, to illuminate the shadows of our world with words chosen with calculating concentration. We seek to be understood, to create community with our words, searching for the beautiful connection that comes when the reader pauses, looks up to wipe a tear or breaks into giggles. And we struggle with the pang of unkind comments, misunderstood intentions, and careless words flung thoughtlessly into the universe.

Writers know how much easier it would be to dismiss our thoughts, to brush them off and become part of the unconscious masses who struggle to put together 140 coherent characters. We understand the ease of dashing off an idea, pushing submit and walking away, and yet we continue to push through the pain of process. Why? To nourish our souls, to spread joy and understanding and passion and consciousness and hope that someday, in that deja vu moment, someone will call forth an experience and smile, reach out their hand, and make the world just a touch more beautiful.

That’s what happens when we focus on our words. We compose a wholehearted life. We create the kind of world we want to live in, for now and forever.

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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I was chatting with an online friend the other day about the German plane crash and all the scary situations going on around the world, and she confessed that by the end of the day, she just wanted to step away from everything. I could completely relate. At times, the news absolutely sends me into such a state of sadness and worry it becomes overwhelming. To think of the suffering of families who are in the midst of loss and terror triggers that emotional part of me, completely overriding my logical side that tells me statistics are on my side, that my family is safe, and all will be well.

Being an emotional person can be seriously challenging – especially as a parent.

It’s taken me years to switch my thinking about how I process the world around me – to realize that my ability to feel strongly is actually something to be grateful for.

Strangely enough I don’t often cry while watching movies or reading books – unusual for me, because in ‘real life’, just seeing a person suffering, people living in poverty or a child hurting or being bullied sends my emotions flowing quickly and freely like a river with no end.

So on a lazy Saturday afternoon, when my son and I popped in the movie “Boyhood”, I had no expectation that I should have a box of tissues by my side.

Maybe it was that this year I’ve come full circle with parenting little ones. Maybe it was that we were spending the afternoon at Tahoe watching movies instead of skiing. Maybe it was that I was tired or hungry or relaxed or….maybe it was that the movie was just what I needed to watch.

Maybe I needed to remember all the moments – the fights in the back seat of the car, the collections of rocks and sticks and bird bones, or the blur of walks and play dates and bad haircuts and tears and friendships and families and attempts, through it all, to be the best mom that I can.

Yes, the tears flowed when Patricia Arquette (who absolutely deserved that Academy Award) reminded me that when they leave the safety of our family nest, that it’s time for us to not only remember all those moments, but create what comes next. Do you remember her last lines in the film? They were awesome, emotional, and struck my heart. Fighting tears, she reminds us that motherhood is a series of ‘milestones’, and despite knowing that the time will come when our children leave home, it’s never easy – especially when they’re happy about it. Her words echoed my own, written as my daughter left for college.

She reminded me that motherhood is a series of choices – some that work out in the moment, and some that we don’t see for years to come. She reminded me how lucky I am to have those slips of time, ordinary days that add up into an extraordinary life.

For an emotional mom like me, those choices typically occur after great agonizing and then a magnitude of moments second guessing my decision-and then it stops. Real life is in front of me. Life happens, the news reminds us that life takes us full circle whether we like it or not, and that the moments we have in each day – those bits of time that might seem insignificant or overwhelming or just simply there – are our lives. And when the children graduate and move on to their next adventure, so must we.

So take a moment – step away from life for a moment – go ahead and put “Boyhood” on – snuggle up with someone you love, and keep a box of tissues handy.

I sincerely hope you need them.

photo credit: Innocent hands via photopin (license)

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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