Just as our kids mirror our stress, they can also mirror our calm– From The Self Driven Child: Chapter on How to Be A Non-Anxious Presence.

This week something strange happened: I remained overwhelmingly calm, even patient in the face of a train wreck. That we found ourselves here was no surprise to me. Every five weeks our kids put on an exhibition to share what they’ve been working on. It’s usually an elaborate and involved affair. Because it’s actually led by students (ranging from kindergarten through high school), it’s also various stages of disorganized. This isn’t your typical school performance planned and executed by adults where the goal is to present a perfect product. This is students themselves actually conceiving of and carrying out their vision of how to demonstrate what they’ve learned. Sometimes it’s spectacular and other times it’s a hot mess. Either way, they’re in charge and it’s an amazing learning opportunity for both the kids and the adults.

So here we were, the night before the exhibition when one of my girls (let’s call her the procrastinator) shares that suddenly she needs to go to the store to purchase materials. We learn that she has plans to bake for the next day’s program, except she fails to plan for which ingredients she needs. Multiple trips to Publix later, I’m pissed. I just got back in town from traveling so I’m also tired. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, your poor planning doesn’t constitute an emergency for me. By 10pm that evening she’s still hard at work in the kitchen creating her masterpiece. I go to bed fully aware that she’s got a late night ahead of her.

The next morning I woke up to find dishes everywhere and my daughter running around because she’d overslept. She knew she was in trouble (not with us), but she risked not completing her project. Ordinarily it’s at this point that I would have lost it. Why did you wait so late to start? And what are you going to do about the disaster that is our kitchen? But in that moment, she didn’t need to hear a word from me. The experience was providing its own lesson. My wife, always good in an emergency (she is a nurse after all), stepped in and offered some suggestions of work arounds to finish her baking project. She even helped. Meanwhile, I quietly worked around the mess, prepared breakfast for everyone to eat, and then got myself ready.

Ultimately everything turned out fine. The exhibition was a success. We later cleaned up the mess. We even had a conversation about ways to better plan next time. In the middle of the heated moment I could have easily let my frustration and anxiety further stress her out. Not only would that have been counterproductive, but it would have communicated to my daughter my lack of confidence in her ability to work through this tough situation. Instead, I was able to check myself by acknowledging my frustrations, while also putting them into context. There was a moment the night before right as I was getting ready to go to bed where I just stood in awe of her doing something she loved. Never mind that it created angst for me about how she would get everything done in time. She was in her zone, and when your kid’s juices are flowing good things happen. I’m just glad I had a front row seat to the magic of her chaos.