To Parent Scared ... or with Courage

E57: Raising Future-Ready Leaders, Autumn

Oct 14, 2022

My heart was pounding as I handed my youngest child the stack of N95 masks, tea and Tylenol. I watched my son carefully assembling the familiar packing cubes for the 8-week internship he was starting in San Francisco. The luggage had last been used 90 days ago. It had carried home the remnants of our interrupted lives as each member of the family returned rapidly from different corners of the globe, and different parts of our life journey.

Now he was packing again. Leaving. Breaking our COVID bubble.
Yes, another country.

That meant crossing borders.
Flying in planes.
Interacting with other humans.
California may have just opened after its multi-week lockdown but Canada was still isolating. This was not the same separation anxiety I’d felt each time I’d previously watched him pack his bags to return to school. I was f-Reak-ing out.

“Can’t you dial in remotely? Everyone else is doing it,” I begged, wearing my Future of Work hat. I watched him roll his eyes at the thought of staring at the same beige wall for the entire Canadian summer while the California sun beckoned.

“Mum! You know this is a great opportunity for me. And my boss wants me there in person.”

“But you realize I’m not going to be comfortable until you are back under my roof again, right?”
There. I’d voiced it. The conundrum of every parent, the question that keeps us awake at night:

I can’t protect you when you are away from me.
Have I done enough to prepare you for that big, bold, unpredictable world out there?

The World Can Be A Dangerous Place

“Please be cautious,” I urged him calmly, trying to hide my inner turmoil, “these are (to use an overworked term) unprecedented times.”

“Look Mum, I understand that you’re worried,” his 6’ frame towered over me as he leaned in for a hug. “Here. I’ve got my plan. I know Covid-19 is no joke.” He talked me through his mental models, his decision-making, and his exit plans. “I picked an airline that offers social distancing. I promise to stay masked. I’m isolating for a week before going into the office. I’ve negotiated to buy a bike so I won’t be on transit. I’ll get groceries delivered. I’ve made a list of the nearest hospital that is in network should the worst happen. These are all the numbers you’ll need.”

… hospital…? My heart stopped.
First with worry. The State of California’s Covid case count of 114,052 was higher than the 91,705 across all of Canada. 84 people had already died from Covid-19 in California.
Then with pride. How many 19-year-old Canadians who grew up with healthcare take the time to read through all 70+ pages of their medical coverage?

"Also, when I have children, what risks will I allow them to take? You and Dad showed us that we sometimes have to be willing to take calculated risks and a few chances. We have to be willing to step to the edge and push the boundaries.”

“But for now, I am compartmentalizing. I am dealing with what is in front of me so that I can do the best possible job of getting there and living safely," he said as he returned to carefully rolling up sets of clothing and loading them into the packing cubes, separate containers for his electronic cords, his socks, his crazy Hawaiian shirts. “One step at a time.”

To Protect. Or Prepare. That is the question.

“How can you let him do that?” asked my epidemiologist sister. “Aren’t you nervous? Aren’t you afraid?” My ER nurse sister-in-law voiced my deepest fears. All valid questions. They each have a unique vantage point.

The answer was YES. A big bold YES. It had been the same when his brother decided to backpack solo for 100 days through South America so he could strengthen his spoken Spanish.

I try to downplay the way I felt inside. Ideally, I want to wrap my children in bubble wrap and keep them home. My instinct is to protect them - to parent scared.

But doing that does not guarantee that they will never see pain, challenge and suffering. My fear alone is insufficient preparation for what’s ahead.

I also want these kids to go out there and embrace the journey of life.
I want them to have confidence and hutzpah and adventure.
I want them to understand that they will not always be safe.
I need them to meet life’s speedbumps head-on.
Particularly if we are raising a generation of future-ready leaders.

And I want to model for them how to parent their own children a generation from now into an even more unpredictable future.

There is an Instagram voice clip doing the rounds right now:

“If you are going to make your kids tough
- which they better be if they are going to survive in the world -
you can't interfere when they're doing dangerous things carefully.”
– Jordan Peterson

I’m not a big Jordan Peterson fan, but the words feel appropriate. My son has pre-empted all my questions and concerns. He knows and understands the danger. He has a plan. Can I trust that he has the foundational skills to handle new issues as they come up?

So, I dig deep and choose to parent courageously.
That means acknowledging the anxiety, but not being deterred by it.
It means embracing the fear, but sending these kids out with a solid foundation, nurtured over their lifetime.
I share forward the skills that their great-great-grandparents demonstrated while migrating to new continents over the past two centuries:

Heightened awareness and signal detection
Decision making
Community building
Critical thinking
Taking action
Humility

“Security is mostly a superstition.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
— Helen Keller

This is what I know. The only predictable thing about life is that it is unpredictable.

Offering my child a roadmap of things to do in different situations only works if I can predict every event. That system falls apart when something as unimaginable as a worldwide pandemic shows up in our lives. Who (apart from Bill Gates, public health and UN epidemiologists) planned for this?

This is also what I know. I was once that child. The one who wanted to shed my parent’s (over)protective mantle and explore the wider world. It would be hypocritical of me to withhold that same agency from my children.

I can offer support and unconditional love. I can communicate my belief that they have the self-confidence to deal with most situations, and the humility to ask for help and ideas when they need it. The same confidence and trust that my parents had nervously modelled to me decades before.

Different problems

My son never once entered the office or shook the hand of his boss. Instead, he worked from the seclusion of his Airbnb. As happens, California shuttered again the week that his plane touched down. Covid was not the problem my son would deal with. Maybe because he knew enough to be prepared and stay safe.

Instead, he faced other life decisions.

Along with every parent and student out there, he faced the same Covid quandary in July 2020. Should he take a gap year in the middle of his degree? Or roll the dice on whether this pandemic would be done and he would be able to attend in person. Or come home to Canada, bubble and study virtually? He chose to extend his internship as he was enjoying the work on hydrogen-powered municipal transit. The extended internship gave him the rare opportunity to co-author and publish a scientific paper with his Chief Technology Officer.

However. He had never experienced forest fires like the ones that would decimate much of San Francisco and the Bay Area in August 2020. “Do you have a plan? How will you get out of there? Do you have a go-bag ready with your passport and other important documents?” I rapidly texted my TikTok baby, my WhatsApp chat on fire with messages of concern from our global family who were watching the evacuations on traditional TVs. “I’ll call an Uber,” he nonchalantly responded.
Oh, the hubris of youth! Didn’t he realize that every available Uber driver would be hightailing it to safety with their own families?

Epilogue

Everything ended okay.

He used that gap year well. While in quarantine, he used Masterclass to radically change his sleep habits (Matthew Walker), learn to cook (Yotam Ottolenghi) and sample music. He travelled across the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Monument Valley, discovering more natural beauty. He spent the summer working on an isolated French vineyard to re-immerse himself in the French language.

He is now in his final year of university. He does not regret his decision. He made the best of a very tumultuous year in our collective memories. He has always marched to the beat of his own drum, and now he is onto other life adventures.

I, on the other hand, continue to ask myself if I have given him enough tools to live his life boldly. I soldier on, parenting courageously.

Dear Tribe Tilt,
It has been a very busy week - with the start of Write of Passage cohort 9 and Canadian Thanksgiving.

I am honoured to welcome so many new members to our group. Many are Write of Passage students, and over time I would like to share some of their writing with you. I am privileged to get to see their work as it first launches its way into the world.

I am also struck by the beauty all around me. My neighbourhood is a riot of reds, oranges, yellows and greens. It is as if nature wants to remind us that change can be a moment of celebration. The cover photo is sunset taken on the beach in Goa (thank you Noreen), at the same time as these photos were taken on the streets in my neighbourhood. Isn’t nature glorious?

Click on my Instagram page @tiltthefuture for my reel “Running at the speed of salmon” to watch the wonderful colours on the Credit River as the salmon make their way upstream to spawn.

Stay healthy. From there all else becomes possible.
Karena

Thank you to the following members of Write of Passage, whose time and edits significantly improved what you are reading today:

Entrepreneur Megan Mellin, Digital Nomad Cecile Marion, Paddleboarder and amazing editor Chris Wong, Storyteller Robert Tighe, Education champion Richard Roman, Future of Education Kelly Davis, Jisoo Kim, Inventor Chao Lam

Please check out their work.

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