When I was a little kid, my parents forced me - didn’t encourage me, forced me - to join and attempt all sorts of extracurricular activities.
Little league baseball, parks and rec soccer and basketball, piano, flute, clarinet, etc. They thought that exposing us to new things was the best way for me (and my older brothers) to explore new experiences and figure out what we liked and what we were good at. And they probably assumed we wouldn’t do it ourselves.
I hated doing some of that stuff and enjoyed some of that stuff, and at the end of the day, I got to at least say I gave it a shot and learned something about myself (i.e., I hate soccer and am a hell of a clarinetist - I haven’t played in years but I can still rock the 90210 theme!). So there’s that.
As new parents, Mom and Buried and I applied a similar philosophy - at first. We pushed Detective Munch to participate in all manner of things throughout elementary school - baseball, soccer, karate, music lessons - but none of it really stuck, some of it went quite poorly, and as his ADHD and anxiety emerged, we backed off a bit. (The Hammer, meanwhile, is happy to jump into things headfirst and hardly needs the push. Siblings!)
Stepping out of his comfort zone is not his - or anyone’s - favorite thing to do, and after a tough couple of years in school, we’ve given him the leeway he needs to stay comfortable, rather than make things harder on him than they’ve been. And now I’m worried that approach might backfire.
This is the primary challenge of parenting: balancing your kids’ short-term wants with their long-term needs. Every kid wants to play video games and ea junk food all day long, but we parents know they need education and exercise and healthy foods. They don’t always know what’s best for them, and are more likely to choose instant gratification over some eventual, theoretical payoff, and it’s on us to push them to pursue things that will be better for them down the line.
I’m not sure we’re doing that.
A lot of modern parents get a bad rap for overscheduling their kids lives, loading them up with activities to keep them busy and fill their college applications. Mom and Buried and I haven’t been doing that with Detective Munch, for a variety of reasons, including his mental health, our bank accounts, and a little bit of laziness.
About the only things he is interested in these days are video games and reading, and I’m worried his reluctance to try new things - whether out of complacency and laziness or anxiety and insecurity - is shrinking his horizons. But I’ve also seen kids get forced into things they didn’t want to do, leading to a total shutdown of interest and participation in anything at all.
Okay, he’s only 12. His personality is still developing; his school experience has improved over the past few months, thanks to a transfer into a school that’s a better fit for him, and we’ve seen more independence and a bit more maturity. Maybe in high school he’ll find that one teacher who lights him up, and maybe in college and beyond his video game obsession will translate into an actual career doing something he loves. Our goal isn’t necessarily to set him up to be successful so much as it is to broaden his chances at finding success, to discover things he’s passionate about and proficient at. He’ll have a better shot at doing that if he can get over his initial discomfort and anxiety and fear of failure.
Again, it’s not too late. Just today, Mom and Buried and I visited his school to watch him participate in a presentation with his theater class - years ago, she had encouraged him to give theater a shot after seeing it spark his interest, but she backed off after some stage fright - and we were nervous. We’ve seen him shut down in front of crowds, his anxiety getting the best of him. But today was the opposite. He was great! Natural and enthusiastic and clearly enjoying himself. Is he going to be the next Daniel Day-Lewis? Yes, probably. But that doesn’t matter.
What matters is that he gave something new a try and it went well. Well enough that he might want to keep trying it, and well enough might even see the benefits of trying other things. Well enough that while I’m relieved he may have found a new outlet, I’m also wondering if our entire strategy was a mistake and we should have been pushing him harder to try new things all along…
Or maybe the lesson is to let kids take things at their own pace, without unnecessary pressure, which could turn them off (like when I was desperate for my 12yo to dunk his head under water and it just made him resist - until he finally got there on his own and has never looked back).
My dude likes to take things at his own pace, when he’s ready, which is perfectly okay with us - except when “his own pace” means not emerging until after 23 hours of labor. But you’ll have to ask my wife about that. I was asleep for most of it.
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Pop Culture Stuff
Across the Spider-verse is fantastic. Go see it - but make sure you see Into the Spider-verse first!
I also was lucky to be invited to an advance screening of The Flash, which is good, because I didn’t necessarily want to pay for anything starring Ezra Miller but I did want to see the movie. It’s VERY similar to Spider-verse, what with the multiverse and alternate realities and different versions of characters and superheroes trying to fix mistakes, but it’s nowhere near as good, even with Michael Keaton reprising his role as Batman.
My 12yo loved it, but I didn’t jibe with the humor/Ezra Miller, and the big action set-piece that takes up most of the third act relied heavily upon a previous DC movie/character I didn’t much like the first time around. But there are some fun moments, and the audience my son and I saw it with erupted multiple times at the special callbacks/references/cameos that happen in the final 15 mins or so. But the screening was full of fanboys so make of that what you will.
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We have almost 21 and 18 yo sons, with ADHD and anxiety. I can assure you, you are doing it equal parts completely right and completely wrong. And that's ok, because what they took away from it was their parents cared enough to try to make their lives worth living, on their terms not ours.