For the last few years, I’ve planned a physically and mentally challenging activity for us to do as a family. In years past, it’s been hikes (Mount Louie and Ambler in Grande Cache, Lake Louise Tea House, Sulphur Mountain in Banff), but this year, with Ruby’s new bike-riding skills, we decided to bike the Legacy Trail from Canmore to Banff.
It was about 20 km each way (12.5 miles each way for my American readers).
It’s not so much physically difficult as it is long, with a few uphill climbs.
The kids have a love/hate relationship with these endeavours. I think they enjoy the time we spend together but hate the difficulty and boredom intrinsic to the activities.
As with every challenge we do as a family, there were several meltdowns (often Ruby). And not every exchange is patient and encouraging (often me).
I’m not a perfect mom, and after several hours of riding, when I felt like the bike seat was going to have to be surgically removed from my ass, I was annoyed and wanted the discomfort to end just as much as they did.
There were several times throughout the ride when Ruby was crying and I told her, “Crying isn’t going to get you to Banff any faster and WE ARE going to Banff AND BACK. We are DOING THIS.”
Was she pissed at me for a lot of the ride? For sure.
She thought I was mean and “a bully” for telling her to pick up her pace a bit and keep going. I could tell the kids were tired, hungry, and bored at times, but we kept going and completed the ride.
Derk and I know going into these activities that there’s going to be a big part of it that is really shitty, really not fun, and really frustrating, but these challenges aren’t just for our kids.
They are also an opportunity for the two of us to grow as parents and partners—to practice patience, to support and lead, and role model commitment to the process and perseverance.
In The Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter writes about misogi, a Japanese Shinto practice and ritual of physical and spiritual purification. The modern idea of misogi is a deliberately difficult personal challenge designed to push you beyond your usual limits and show you what you’re capable of.
In fitness and personal development circles, it usually means one major challenge each year that:
- Feels intimidating and has a real chance of failure
- Requires commitment and resilience
- Is meaningful to you—not done for praise or social media
- Is difficult but not recklessly dangerous
- Changes how you see yourself afterward
There is some irony in posting a reel of us doing this bike ride while writing about it, but I think there is purpose in putting more stories of challenging our children out into the world. It’s becoming less and less prevalent, and yet, it holds so much value.
In Brigid Schulte’s book Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, she writes,
“Today’s over-helicoptered children, bred on parental overpraise and the worship of self-esteem, are entitled, spoiled, self-centered, value being rich, have inflated egos, and feel… miserable. They feel they don’t have the power to control their own destiny, so they tend to be cynical and feel easily victimized. And having been so programmed all of their lives, they hit young adulthood and aren’t even sure of what they like, much less who they are. All that schlepping around in the car, from voice lessons to the tutor to baseball practice, doesn’t build the intimacy or the independence that gives rise to a quality that researchers are finding is key to both success and happiness. A quality they call grit.
Grit is the ability to set your mind to something and stick with it when the going gets hard. Studies have found that the more grit children have, the higher their grade point average, the more likely they are to get through a tough program, outrank others in competitions like the national spelling bee, to be better educated, and have a more stable career. Grit is a better indicator of success, these studies found, than either SAT scores or IQ. The more grit, the more likely you are to follow a passion, persevere, and do the sometimes arduous work on your own to reach a goal. And the more you do that, research shows, the more likely you are to be happy. And isn’t that what we all say we want for our kids?”
I’m well aware that I’m defying some ideas of ideal parenting, not only with these difficult activities, but also by demonstrating radical honesty, pushing my kids toward independence, and allowing them the freedom to make mistakes.
I feel ambivalent when I tell other parents about these activities and receive disapproving stares for intentionally subjecting my kids to discomfort.
Despite my ambivalence, I’m choosing the divergent path—the one where we continue doing these difficult endeavours, having hard yet honest conversations, and facing disappointments and failure together because I believe it makes us all stronger, better, closer, and more aligned with our purpose.
I make my kids do hard things because I want them to know they’re tougher and more capable than they think.
I want to push the boundaries of their comfort zone now so that when more trivial discomforts arise, they can scale them appropriately against the bigger picture.
The capacity to dig deeper when you feel like giving up does not require talent or above-average ability at a certain sport, area of academics, or artistic domain. Kids don’t have to be the best at anything to cultivate grit. Like most things, it takes practice.
With practice comes the experience and confidence to know they CAN DO HARD THINGS even when they are extremely uncomfortable—because they’ve done them before.
Life is tough. You never know what losses you will endure.
But the more challenges you face, the more capable you feel.
And I believe deeply that one of my greatest responsibilities as a mother is to prepare my children to face this life with grit and the belief that everything will be okay even when it feels like it won’t.
There isn’t a perfect formula for nurturance, protection, and guidance. No one really knows what the hell we are doing in this parenting thing. I may not always get it right, but I’m doing my best to find the balance between pushing them out of their comfort zone so they’ll grow as individuals and providing a safe and supportive place to land.
MSMAMACHIC 