Here at Parent-ing, we firmly believe in leaning in.
Picture yourself laying in bed with your laptop at 10pm (in other words, picture us last night). The kids are asleep and you are watching something fascinating–probably on TLC–like a show about morbidly obese dumpster divers, or fundamentalist cult members escaping the compound to try their hand at pole dancing. You are so tired that you are now watching the show with one eye open and the other eye squeezed shut. But this is your hard-earned time alone and you are not about to give it up easily. When the episode ends, that passive-aggressive message that asks if you’re still watching pops up on your screen and you realize that this is a critical moment: do you click “yes” and find out what it feels like for Lydia to wear pasties for the first time? Or do you close the laptop, do some nighttime stretches, meditate, and then fall asleep? Let’s be honest: it was nearly impossible for us to type that last sentence. Because the answer is obviously to lean in to that next episode. Lean in to saying, “more of this please, because it is so goddamn relaxing.”
We’ve noticed lately, in our own lives and reflected in the media, that many of us are recalibrating our definition of success. Mediocrity, as in, reaching the true middle, actually feels like a pretty good leaning place. There might be a generational element of yearning for a middle class life that seems further and further out of reach for so many of us, or maybe it’s a well-trodden rite of coming into middle age. It might be that COVID has forced us to all just celebrate the little things. Whatever it is, we are reminding ourselves that after a point, ambition–to get a promotion, to receive accolades, to make more money––is somewhat hollow in its returns.
Yet there is a parallel dynamic in which on one hand, we accept our middling lives with relief and contentment, but we still can’t quite shake ourselves of some deeply ingrained need to Achieve Things, and so we pass this burden on to our kids. We may not care about becoming a CEO anymore, but little Johnny has it in him to become a concert pianist, so let’s get that practice chart going STAT. An article in the Atlantic from 2019 titled, Stop Trying to Raise Successful Kids, reminds us to shift the focus to kindness and being a helper instead of winning and getting A’s. This isn’t giving up – we can still nurture our kids’ interests – but a little reframing goes a long way.
The truth is, sometimes we just want to do nothing and that’s okay. To quote the oft-overlooked MacKenzie from the golden age of Dance Moms (because all roads lead back to TLC), sometimes we just don’t want to dance, we “just want to sit on the couch and eat chips.”