Several weekends ago, I took my eldest son, Nolan, to his first official Squirt hockey tournament.
Living in Northern Minnesota, hockey is a way of life. My husband, Jared, is Minnesota through and through. He has a love for the game that can be likened to someone's love for their culture or their heritage. I grew up just across the bridge in Superior, WI and, although hockey is a big deal in Superior, my childhood winters were spent in sweaty gymnasiums playing basketball. Over the years, I've gained an appreciation for the game of hockey. For me, the game my children play is less important than the experience and life lessons that come with playing any sort of team sport. This hockey season has been an adjustment for Nolan. Prior to this year, there had been a slow progression of the game that started with learning to skate, to playing on small rinks with many many opportunities to score goals, but no official "score" was kept. Everyone walks away a winner. This year, for Nolan's age group, they play on a full sheet of ice, with goalies, and penalties, and probably the most significant change, an official score. When all is said and done, one team is victorious, while the other team skates to the locker room (or outside to the parking lot because we are in the midst of a pandemic) exhausted from three periods of grinding their way through a game; only to end in defeat. If your team wins, good vibes carry you home. If your teams loses, well, I think most of us know the feeling of defeat. Clinical psychologist, Dr. Steven Hayes, often mentions that one of the most important questions that life asks us is: What are you going to do about difficult thoughts and feelings? He stresses its importance because there is loads of research out there that suggests, how we answer that question says a lot about the trajectory of our (or our children's) lives. Will it unfold in a positive way toward prosperity, love, freedom, contribution? Or will it take a downward spiral into misery and suffering? Our culture insists that humans are naturally happy. I bet most of you reading this could help me finish a line that is often featured at the end of some of the most beloved fairy tales from our childhood. And they all lived..... ....happily ever after. It’s so easy to get the sense that everyone around us is living "their" happily ever after. The reality is almost 30% of people will suffer from a psychiatric disorder at some stage in their life. Not to mention the other miserable things that life deals us: loneliness, divorce, work stress, midlife crisis, relationship issues, lack of meaning or purpose in life. People walk around, students walk around, our children walk around with the belief that everyone else is happy except for them. In his book The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris describes what he calls "happiness myths". Three common happiness myths he often talks about are:
Harris goes on to explain that anyone who is willing to hold onto these notions too tightly will be miserable. The truth is, life is difficult, and experiencing an ever changing flow of emotions is "normal". Good feelings are fleeting just like the rest of our emotions. The more you chase that "good feeling" the more you lose sight of true happiness, which as Harris puts it, is leading a rich and meaningful life. If you're not happy....that doesn't necessarily mean there is something wrong with you....in fact in many cases it means there is something "right" with you. If our children aren't happy. That doesn't mean there is something wrong or defective with them either. They aren't broken and they don't need "fixing". Often times when parents are asked what they want most for their children they will say, "I just want them to be happy." I get it. When my kids are experiencing those "good feelings", those same "good feelings" wash over me. It is miserable for me to sit in my children's unpleasant emotions with them. I feel a pull, an urge, to do something about it. Sometimes I even find myself feeling anger and frustration when they emot anything other than joy and gratitude. This is especially true if I have worked really hard to create an experience that I am hoping will illicit those "good feelings" in my children. I now realize this is just another form of me chasing that good feeling for myself. A few weeks ago, after many hockey-packed days, Nolan told me he didn't want to go to practice that night. He said he didn't even know if he wanted to keep playing hockey. He said it just wasn't as fun as it had been in the past. Nolan shared that his body was sore, that practice was hard, and that he didn't like that feeling in his body when he couldn't catch his breath. Luckily, I had just listened to this great podcast where Tim Ferriss interviews Dr. Stephi Cohen, a bodybuilder who holds 25 world records including one for deadlifting 4.4x her body weight. Seriously, she is a beast. One of the topics Ferriss and Cohen discuss is the concept of quitting. Cohen describes two types of quitting. The good kind of quitting and the bad kind of quitting. She acknowledges that there are times when quitting is the most courageous thing we can do. She talks about how when we invest time and money into something, we are often resistant to quit even if it's a job we hate, or a relationship that is going nowhere. Then Cohen talks about the bad kind of quitting. Quitting when we encounter resistance. Pain. Set-backs. Discomfort. The kind of resistance my 9-year-old was experiencing. I felt like the universe had kindly offered me the language I needed to have a productive conversation with my son while he lie splayed out on the recliner that Sunday afternoon, begging me to let him skip practice that day. It went something like this.... Me: Nolan, I bet your body feels uncomfortable right now. It doesn't feel good when your legs hurt and your lungs burn does it? Nolan: No. It's terrible. I hate hockey. I don't want to go tonight. I just want to take the night off and veg. Me: I understand. I think I would want to take the night off too. Unfortunately for me, it's my job as a parent to make sure my kids learn hard lessons in life. Nolan: I don't want to learn any lessons. I want to watch Bunk'd and relax tonight. Me: Oh, yeah. That sounds nice. It's just that I wouldn't be doing my job if I let you do that, so I am going to have to bring you to practice tonight. Sorry, bud. Nolan: (Cue waterworks) I don't want to go! You are so mean! I want to quit hockey. Me: I'm sorry you feel that way bud. It's just that as a parent it's my job to make sure if you are going to quit something, its the good kind of quitting, not the bad kind of quitting. (Enter in a few sobs from across the room. By the way I am in the kitchen doing some meal prep and he is in the living room so we are not making eye contact. I've found that children, especially boys, are more receptive to these conversations when they don't occur in a face-to-face manner). You made a commitment to your team and they need you. If you would like to quit hockey after the season is over that is up to you. As a parent, I just can't let you do the bad kind of quitting which is quitting when things get hard. Nolan: Silence. Me: Do you remember that episode of This is Us (This is our "show" that we love to watch together. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for a 9-year-old unless you are willing to have some interesting conversations about family dynamics, relationships, sex, addiction, etc) when Kevin is in high school and he is feeling like he wants to quit the football team because all the weight lifting, and learning the plays, and the hard work is really getting to him? Remember how Rebecca wants to let him quit, but what does Kevin's dad tell her? Nolan: I don't care what Jack thinks! I hate that show and I hate Jack (just in case you were wondering Jack begs Rebecca to not let Kevin quit AND Nolan loves Jack). End of conversation. I walked away, because I couldn't have wrapped it up or left Nolan thinking about anything more useful. He slipped away to his bedroom after that and didn't ask to "not go" to practice again that day. When it was time to get his stuff on he gathered up his gear and I brought him to Cloquet. Fast forward two weeks to the first tournament complete with two nights in a hotel. Over the course of his big hockey weekend, Nolan rode a rollercoaster of emotions, and I found it difficult at times to keep myself on the rails alongside him. Nolan's first game was on Friday afternoon, and he played his heart out. I couldn't wait for him to jump in the van after the game so I could bask in his jubilation. A win for his team, two goals scored, and the knowledge that he left it all out on the ice. I was looking for jubilation, but what I got instead was disappointment. He didn't get the "player of the game helmet." Nolan is a great athlete, but he isn't one of those grinder-types who everyone notices and appreciates because they are just working their tails off at all times. He has played on several teams where there is a "player of the game" type of acknowledgement afterwards, but had yet to earn that honor on any of the teams he'd played on. Affirmation fills this kid up, and it turns out what he wanted more than the goals and the team win, was some recognition that his contributions to the game and to his team were meaningful. He wanted to be assured that he was a worthy member of the tribe. When he really felt like he gave it his all, and didn't get the acknowledgment that he felt desperate for, he was crushed. Well, I was desperate for some good times, man. Jared was home with the little ones and Nolan and I had an entire evening to live it up to ourselves!!! Rather than meet him where he was at and empathize with how he was feeling, I wanted him to push the feeling away and just be happy about his team win and the fact that he had the opportunity to be there in the first place. As I look back I kept trying to chase down that good feeling for Nolan all evening. I brought him shopping and bought him some new shorts, we went on a search for 2020 NFL Football cards which happen to be very difficult to find these days, I offered for him to pick where we went out to eat. We went back to the hotel and I gave him a slew of quarters to use for air hockey and arcade games with his buddies. I pulled out all the stops. You know what, though? Even if he got a little boost of the good feeling from the new shorts, the dinner out, or getting to play the arcade games with his buddies, it was always fleeting and it never took him very long to plummet down to the same place he was when he got into the van after his game. Disappointment. We climbed into our respective beds that night in the hotel room and it wasn't until then that I realized I had placed two unreasonable expectations on my son. Two more "happiness trap" myths: To create a better life, you must get rid of unpleasant feelings. AND You should be able to control what you think and feel. I asked permission to slide into bed with him and scratch his back. He reluctantly okayed it. As my boy lie in bed turned away from me, I said what I should have said hours before. You had a rough day today, didn't you bud? I'm really sorry you didn't get that helmet. I gave him permission to feel, and I finally for the first time that day let go of my expectations and agendas and took time to really "see" him. The emotion I had been asking him to hold back all afternoon washed over him, and we had one of those big little moments. I'm not sure how many more times Nolan is going to allow me to snuggle up in bed with him, so I'm planning on cherishing that one. Nolan woke up the next morning with a totally different outlook on life. I love that he is a morning person! The boys were really successful in their first two games of the day, and Nolan got "the helmet". It's kind of funny because, once he got it, other than feeling relieved that it had finally happened, I think he realized that knowing in his own heart that he played his best was just as rewarding as knowing someone else noticed it too. Saturday night Nolan's team was feeling pretty confident because the team they were up against hadn't won a game yet. What happened next was the best case scenario for a weekend packed with life lessons. Farmington came out guns a blazin' and the boys were faced with a familiar foe in life: Adversity. They closed the 4 goal lead in the third period and ended up losing 4-2, and still managed to make it to the championship game on Sunday. In the championship game, the boys got down again. More adversity to push through. They entered the third period losing 3-0. Somehow the boys tipped the ice in the other direction and popped in two goals within the first few minutes of the third period. A third goal several minutes later knotted it up at 3-3, and the game ended in a tie. In overtime, both teams skated their tired legs off, digging into the kind of resistance that these boys will experience over and over again in their lives. Stephi Cohen talks about, in the face of this resistance, the better athlete, the better team is the one that can adapt and adjust to the competition standards the most quickly. After one of Nolan's teammate's laid himself out as he pushed the puck towards the goal with less than two minutes left in overtime, the game presented Nolan's team with an opportunity. A penalty shot that would decide the outcome of the game. After what felt like a lifetime, there a 9-year-old boy stood at the center of the ice facing what was probably another 9-year-old boy standing in the goal, both with the weight of the outcome of the game for their entire team, resting solely on their shoulders. Pressure. The feeling you get when you don't want to disappoint the people who are depending on you. Trust. The feeling every other boy and coach standing on both benches put in those two boys. It turns out, in that moment, Nolan's teammate adapted and adjusted to the demands of the competition just a little bit quicker than the boy standing in the goal. Victory; and the sweetest kind. The kind that was hard fought. The kind that was found in the face of adversity. The kind that our boys will never forget. Nolan told me that night that it felt like his team won the Stanley Cup. It might as well have been. As exciting as that moment in time was for my son, his team, his coaches, and for everyone else watching either in the stands or on livestream, the life lessons that Nolan and his buddies gained were in the many moments on the path his team forged to get them there. A rich and meaningful experience. A full range of emotions. The kind of happiness I want for my children. The kind that only happens if I stop chasing that good feeling for my kids, and am willing to sit down next to them and hold their hand while we ride the rails. Thanks for reading and don't forget to subscribe if you want to know when I post something new!
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AuthorMy name is Alissa Anderson. I am the School Psychologist for the Esko Public School District in Esko, MN. I am also a mother of three and was certified as a Love and Logic Parent Educator in 2009. Archives
January 2023
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