The Ugly Jacket
Not long ago my son texted me asking if I could add money to his account because he was in Gainesville where it was quite a bit cooler than Cape Coral, and he had spent what was left in his bank account on a jacket. Like most kids he knew which parent to text. His dad would’ve let him learn a budgeting and packing lesson. I laughed thinking, well he finally got cold enough to wear a coat. His text brought me back eight years earlier to a time when I was teaching fourth grade. Kai, my son, was in the fourth-grade class next door to mine. My friend was his teacher. We had planned to take all the students to St. Augustine, Florida for a weekend field trip.
The morning we left it was Florida freezing, or 40ish degrees. Kids and parents were bundled up. I was busy making sure chaperones had their list of students, nametags, and itineraries. One chaperone backed out that morning, sending his son, but refusing to come along. I remember feeling conflicted over comforting his son and wanting to voice my opinion to the father on his choice. It was a stressful early morning. As we waited outside for the buses to arrive, I looked over at Kai and noticed he was the only child without a coat. Mom failure. He didn’t like the one I bought him, so he refused to wear it. Parents and students kept asking him if he was cold. He insisted he was not. I asked him to put on his jacket. He was not cold. He didn’t need it. Goosebumps covered his arms. Here I was leading my students and their parents on a weekend trip, and I couldn’t even get my own son to wear a coat on a blustery morning. As a parent, I felt like a failure. As a teacher I was embarrassed. There was a part of me who wanted to force him to wear the coat or face a threat of punishment (no video games) if he refused. There was that I am your parent you will do what I say voice which always had varying degrees of strength. The more fearful I was that I wasn’t in control, the louder the voice. Then there was another part of me who knew if he got cold enough he’d put on the jacket. I had to ask myself the question… Was I afraid of what everyone would think of my parenting? Yes, I was. I had to choose between knowing my son and what was best for him or allowing my own insecurities to take over and try to force him into wearing the coat. Luckily, despite my embarrassment, I chose knowing my son.
From an early age, I knew Kai had a strong aversion to being told exactly what to do. While keeping him safe, I had to give him room to grow and room to fall and get back up. Watching him learn life lessons was the worst, not only because if he had just listened to me, everything would have worked out (because mom always knows best) but because I felt like his behavior was a direct reflection on my parenting. What would people think? Every tiny mistake he made I felt responsible. Not only did that belief damage me, but it clouded my vision to who my son really was. He was not a people-pleasing, straight A, team sports, school loving, kid. He was a fiercely independent child with a determination that could lead him to sit for four hours building an intricate Lego starship or flat out refuse to eat any kind of vegetable. I had to understand that I was not in complete control of my son. While most parents come to this realization when their kids hit the teens, Kai made sure I understood it as early as first grade when he refused to do his homework. Kai had decided his homework was pointless and boring and even though the teacher thought he should practice what he learned, he disagreed.
Kai taught me an important lesson that took me years to fully understand. I had my expectations for him, and when he didn’t follow them, my first instinct was to ground him until he conformed to how I wanted him to live his life. That was the problem right there… How I wanted him to live his life. I never considered our relationship beyond getting him to college. I always saw Kai as my child. I was in control. What I failed to see was all the years beyond 18. Lucky for both of us my eyes opened when his older sister left for college. Suddenly, the parent-child relationship transitioned slowly until I realized, I may still be the parent, but I’m in a relationship with another adult. And that’s when I eased up on Kai. I understood that I could continue to butt heads with him over how I wanted him to live his life risking our future relationship or I could give him my advice and then step back and watch. The stepping back was and is so incredibly hard when I see disaster looming in the distance. I want to scream, “Let my experience help you! No, don’t take that path!” As much as I want to I cannot prevent him from going through storms. It’s the storms that will make him stronger and better prepared for his journey. I can, however, always be the one on the sidelines, holding the ugly jacket should he choose to slip it on and let it shelter him from the cold.
