It occurred to me today why parenting is so frustrating for me.

Did you hear the one about the tomato family?!?! What did the mother tomato say to the baby tomato? Why won’t you ketchup?

It’s frustrating when my kids aren’t where I want them to be, or where I am. This frustration, no doubt, results from the fact that I’m mostly a selfish person and, while my child is in the process of learning to do something, I’m just focused on me and where I’m at and why can’t my child just be at the same level as me.

This frustration has been coming out most recently in the process of my son learning to drive. I wish he was as good at making turns, as I and my wife are. I wish he could brake more smoothly and accelerate more gradually, like my wife and I do. When he can’t drive the way that my wife and I drive, and all I can do is sit next to him and try to be patient (and mostly fail at that), I know that I am focused on me, rather than being focused on him, and where he’s at, and what he needs.

Of course, I understand how this works, and how it is that my parents were most likely frustrated by me and where I was, as a child, and where they wanted to me to be. I wouldn’t be the kind of driver that I am today if it weren’t for the thousands upon thousands of hours that I’ve spent practicing. I know that those initial hours were not pleasant hours to be in a car with me.

My daughter played her first trumpet solo at church this past weekend. She played so well, and I was so proud of how well she performed and how much practice she’d put in. But, let me tell you, as the father of, not one, but two trumpet players, the initial stages of someone learning to play the trumpet are some irksome moments. All you really have during those initial days, when their trumpet playing sounds more like someone strangling an elephant, is hope.

I also understand that it’s my job to get the kids to where I wish them to be, by training them and teaching them and parenting them. Being frustrated with where they’re at now, without having done anything to advance them, is me being frustrated with what I haven’t done –the kids are just innocent bystanders in the tragedy of how I often fail as a parent.

I think of myself as intelligent, but it’s a crying shame that I didn’t figure this simple fact out much sooner. I guess I’m ahead of those parents who still haven’t figured this out and behind those parents who have been watching me, wondering what the heck I’m doing to my children.

We’re all on the road, just at different places on the road. And, there’s always hope.

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That list bit comes from Dr. Rita Pierson. Dr. Pierson was a world-class educator and school administrator with a deep heart for kids and for the profession of teaching.

At the school district where I teach, every few years, a TED talk featuring Dr. Pierson makes its rounds. The TED talk is entitled “Every Kid Needs A Champion”. In it, Dr. Pierson talks about the connections that teachers need to have with their students and how important it is for students to feel like they have that connection with their teachers. In the TED talk, Dr. Pierson recalls an interaction with a student who’d performed poorly on an assessment. Dr. Pierson chose to celebrate what the student accomplished on the assessment, rather than highlighting their failures. In this interaction, Dr. Pierson recalled telling the student, “You’re on the road!”

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I think waiting until my forties to try to get back in shape was a mistake.  I am writing this portion of the post for anyone in their thirties who’s thinking to themselves, “I still got time before I need to get serious about all of that.” To you, my friend, I say, “Start now.”

I guess I could have put it off until my fifties, and that would have been worse.

It occurred to me yesterday that I think I am in the best shape of my life, including my varsity soccer days back in high school. In fact, I will take a moment to brag –> I ran my first 10K yesterday, and to my surprise, I ran the whole thing without stopping.

For me, the journey toward physical fitness has been about five or six years of fits and starts. But, I’m proud to say, “I’m on the road.”

And, while the road has other people on it that I know who are further down the road, and I often find myself being jealous of them and chasing after them, I realize that there are still other people on the road who are behind me, looking at me and thinking the same things about me and where I’m at.

The truly mind-bending thing is this: if I could ever become capable of quitting the comparison game, quitting the jealousy of others and the envy of what they have that I don’t have, I’d look at the road and see that there are many different versions of me on this road, past versions and future versions. The versions of me on this road that are behind me, in my past, are looking at me and thinking, “I want to get there some day”, while the current me is looking down the road, at possible future versions of me, and hoping, “I want to get there some day”.

And there’s always hope.

* * *

I’m forty-four years old, and I’m embarrassed to say that I am still learning things that I should have known years ago. Only recently have I learned the concept of progress. I’ve spent too much time, too many years, not moving forward. While I’m frustrated when I think of all that wasted time –all that time standing in the same spot on the road– I’m choosing to not to dwell on that. I feel like it’s time for me to start the process of continuing in my journey.