I once worked alongside a woman who was tough. In an office building full of warm and empathetic individuals, she stood out as a person who wasn’t interested in chitchat, didn’t smile very often, and certainly didn’t seem to care if you were the latest student-worker in a long line of uninteresting student workers. She was not, shall we say, nurturing whatsoever and her reputation preceded her.
I was nervous every single time I had to approach her desk and ask her a question. As a person who excelled in the “getting people to like me” category (I could say a few thing about my idolization of likability now), I wasn’t used to interacting with personalities like this one. After I got over my initial surprise at her lack of warmth, I decided something: I was going to work hard to win her over. Putting my own feelings aside was not the norm for me—and still isn’t—but I recognized something in my early 20’s and it was that I was going to have to work on this relationship over time. There was an obstacle—her—and there was a hurdle to get over, and I was determined to conquer this challenge.
In conquering the challenge, I learned a huge lesson in relating to people. Not everyone is a warm fuzzy person! Some people have tough exteriors borne of hard circumstances and others have natural bends towards introversion. Whatever the reason, people are people and will behave differently and that has nothing to do with their motivations, interests, and, hopefully, my relationship with them. This woman became a friend to me during my years of working in this environment, and she is still my best example of powering through what initially felt like a hard situation. I have fond memories of her now.
I confess that I don’t want for my daughter to go through hard times. I want to bubble wrap her, ensuring she has a soft heart towards the world and protecting her from the cruelty I’ve seen. I want to wrap my kindness around her to deflect the unkind words that come in her direction. I want to lay pillows at her feet to protect her from inevitable falls. I want to open her eyes to rainbows and flowers and sunsets without her having to witness the heavy winds and tornados and, yes, the floods. At some level I understand Helicopter Moms. The desire to protect and want the very best for our progeny is strong. With privilege, power, and influence, some of us will stop at nothing to push our children into the future that we think is best, along the route that we think is best, and you better believe we’re going to deflect those hard times we see coming a mile away.
But oh, that’s not the way to go. Not at all.
Even while I was typing about sunshine versus storms, I couldn’t help but notice that sunshine means little unless you’ve been through the longest winter on record and you lost track of warmth and light and were moved to a hopeless place in your heart. Isn’t spring all the more sweet after a hard winter? Each bud on the tree now sings praise to its Maker, and your heart is moved to do the same. Spring isn’t nearly as interesting without the hard crust of snow and layers of salt and the same winter boots pulled on day after day. It is this contrast of lovely versus unlovely that awakens us to the blessings we have.
Our pastor said something in a sermon months ago about hoping that his kids will suffer. Okay okay, it’s so out-of-context here that it’s not fair, and yet, suffering is absolutely part of this human experience. I can tell quite quickly whether a fellow adult has ever suffered based on their compassion and empathy for another suffering human. We don’t mature without have the hard edges rounded off, and oftentimes that rounding happens in the toughest of moments. Every scrape of a knee and fall from a tree leads to a child figuring out her boundaries. The mistakes made in adolescence lead to knowing one’s limits. The stupidity of early adulthood leads to important life lessons.
I can’t be a Helicopter Mom any more than I can sprout wings and fly south when the first snows begin to fly. While everything within me yearns to protect my growing child, I do not believe she is best served by being bubble wrapped and protected from the difficulties of this world. If I remove her from every hard situation—which I physically cannot do—how will she learn her limits? How will she rebound and be bolstered internally when the external world is hard to understand? How will she learn rely on God, who is always present and available to her?
Many kids I know have already been through a lot by the time they hit middle school. I think of those who’ve been adopted—whether in infancy or in later years—and I know they’ve experienced a level of trauma completely unknown by those of us who have been raised by our biological parents. I think of the children I’ve spent time with through the foster care system, and though others may never know of their struggles, I know of the addictions, the lack of parental consistency, the unsafe dwelling places, the abuse and the near-constant neglect may of them have faced by the time they started kindergarten. And kids who aren’t in foster or adoptive homes? Still, life can get hard. The death of a parent, divorce, remarriage, sexual molestation, cross-country moves, bullying at school and home, unkind teachers and coaches, and financial difficulties can all shake up a person from the outside, while from the inside there’s a variety of developmental delays, physical disabilities, and mental illnesses that plague children.
However, the human heart is amazingly resilient. I saw this in the eyes of my students during my student-teaching days and I see it now in my child and in her friends and in my friends’ children. Despite hard things, the human spirit wants to succeed, and it doesn’t want to succeed because a Helicopter Mom removed all difficulties. No! We overcome the difficulties. We make changes. We rebound with encouraging words and encouraging examples and we don’t take for granted the people around us that offer a “You struggle with that? ME TOO!”
So on days (weeks, months, years!) when I feel like protecting my kid, I’ll try to reflect on how much stronger she’s grown in every area that matters in these past 14 years of life. I see her grow in smarts, in empathy, in artistic skills, in relating to animals, and in her faith in a God she can’t see but Who exists and is true and good. I will try to look back at those adorable baby pictures and crazy toddler antics and reflect on the joy she’s brought me and so many others in her world. Perhaps the hardships of this life serve as grit to clean the dirt off of the windows of our souls. May it allow the lights within each of us to shine brighter and brighter as we grow.
