Palmer Trinity School

3 F A L L 2 0 15 It is interesting to read an ancient text and marvel at its immediacy, its modernity. is happened to me recently when I was researching texts about parenting and came across William Martin's reinterpretation of the Tao Te Ching. e original was written by Lao Tzu more than 2,500 years ago, and Martin uses the early writing as a guide for parenting today. In the second verse, "Take Care with Labels," he shares these thoughts: "Call difficult things, ' difficult,' and easy things, 'easy,' without avoiding one and seeking the other and your children will learn self-confidence." is passage helped clarify something I know to be true and know to be difficult: it is okay to be uncomfortable. It is okay for our children to be uncomfortable and sad and lonely and wistful. It is okay to experience a full range of human emotions, without seeking some and avoiding others. Karen Vincent, a licensed therapist, states that our desire for our children to always be comfortable is natural and it's also not doing them any favors. If it's self-confident children we're aiming to raise, we need to take a step back from the comfort path. is summer, my husband and I learned this firsthand. In July, our family went to Spain and traveled together before leaving our 12-year-old son to stay with my husband's aunt, uncle, and cousins in Madrid for a month. My husband and I continued our trip together for another ten days, while our son spent time at the beach with his Spanish family. Within two days, we received calls from our son telling us he was homesick, that he was lonely, and although he spoke fluent Spanish, he was frustrated when trying to communicate easily with his younger cousins. "Please pick me up now," he asked. Although these conversations broke our hearts, we reminded ourselves what we were like at that age. Both of us went somewhere at the age of 12, either to camp or to stay with a family member for a few weeks, and both of us remember having the exact same feelings as our son. Did our parents come save us from our discomfort? Mine actually did, one summer, and I still regret the feeling of failure I had for quitting the music camp. What would we be "rescuing" our son from, we asked ourselves? A chance to sort out his own problems? An attempt to build tenacity? Wouldn't this set a troubling precedent for new adventures and experiences? It's so easy to dismiss "helicopter parents" or "overindulgent parents" as being the root of all that is lazy in our society. But, when we see our children are uncomfortable or fearful, shouldn't we try to remedy the problem? Like so much in parenting, knowing when to step in and when to back away is tricky. When we talk about our children's discomfort, sometimes it seems that it's connected to our own. It's not easy for us to be uncomfortable, either, whether it's at work, or with someone with whom it's challenging to communicate, or within our own bodies and expectations for ourselves. Mr. Roberts spoke about failure in our Opening Chapel, and again in his article in this issue. Fear of failure is a constant negotiation. By "solving" our children's discomfort, perhaps it seems that we're alleviating our own. So, our son stayed. He looks back on his relatives fondly and actually had fun on his trip. He also, we hope, learned that he is capable of navigating unfamiliar waters on his own, and we trust his ability to do so. To all of the new and returning Palmer Trinity families this year, thank you for trusting our school to teach your children to face new experiences with confidence. S U Z A N N E G O T T L I E B C A L L E JA A S S O C I AT E H E A D F O R C O M M U N I C AT I O N S A N D S T R AT E G I C PA R T N E R S H I P S M E S S A G E F R O M T H E E D I T O R

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