Time to Stretch Your Wings and Fly

I got a late start in the parenting game.

I was 36 when I first got married (I was cautious), and I was 39 when my firstborn took her first breaths outside the womb. I was 42 when my second and last child was born.

Yes, I am an old dad.

I am sure there are many negatives to being an older dad: less available energy, increased grouchiness, and you will die earlier in your child’s life. But there are upsides: you are more mature and settled, additional patience is available, and you can appreciate better “the big picture.” Maybe you have earned some wisdom over the years (and maybe not). If so, your kids will benefit from that. I fret to think about what kind of father I would have been at 25 or 30-years of age. Yikes.

I am 55-years old now. My older daughter, Julia, is fifteen and will soon start her sophomore year of high school. Like all teens, she has her struggles. But she is thriving — I have taught high school for over two decades and I know a teenage success story when I see it. My daughter is in a specialized science academy in her high school, and she is also a reporter on the school newspaper. Add Julia’s other Honor’s classes to the mix, and she doesn’t even have room in her schedule for her foreign language class. So we will pay for a tutor so Julia can learn Spanish on weekends. And she is a varsity player on the tennis team.

I look at all this, and I suspect I will barely see adolescent Julia over the next three years, as she will be so busy. Many of my buddies tell me that they don’t often see their teenagers between school, homework, extracurriculars, and friend obligations; the kids are busy. But Julia has focus, ambition, and drive — high school is well launched for her. Next thing I know, she’ll be off to college. Life is speeding up. Is Julia slipping away out of my life already? The thought brings a bit of panic to me.

But then I remember. I teach at the high school she attends, and I am the coach of her tennis team on campus. So we will be together for huge chunks of the time over the next three years. I am Julia’s ride to and from campus everyday; I sometimes feel like her personal chauffeur, inside and outside of school. I am still important. Julia will have all the support she needs.

But she is well launched into high school, as I mentioned, and this leads me to hope to be able to recede into the background. This is Julia’s show. I will try to stand back and watch what she can do. In nine months Julia will have her driver’s license. In three years she will be ready to apply to college. In four years she will be moving away from home into her university dorm.

Granted, I taught Julia how to read and play tennis, just as soon I will teach her how to drive a car. Almost from the moment she could form words (and even before) I taught Julia to love narrative and the written word. I read all the novels in Julia’s high school curriculum with her before she left middle school. The groundwork was laid in so many ways. But Julia’s success belongs to her. She was born with a certain temperament. Julia has always been an impressive kid, and she will be an impressive adult, but I feel she came out of the womb this way. Her parents don’t get most of the credit, in my opinion.

I suspect the opposite can also be true. There are kids who are troubled almost from birth onwards. They were troubled growing up. They were troubled also as adults and continued to struggle all the way until the end. They were kind of born that way. Even attentive and loving parents can’t make much of a difference. Past a certain point, DNA is DNA. It is not infinitely malleable.

Almost all of us parents do the best we can with what we’ve got, but it is complicated. And parents are only one part of the equation. Your offspring has a say, too.

Egregious examples of bad parenting notwithstanding, your kid will be who they were born to be no matter what you do. You can move the dial a bit this way or that as a parent, but your kid is who they are. And God help that parent who wants to try and change their child’s temperament — who wants to work at cross purposes to who their child is by nature. This is what experience has taught me.

At any rate, my wife and I wanted to get more travel in our family’s life after all the Covid-19 quarantine nonsense. So I found a language school in Costa Rica and made arrangements, and so my wife and daughter left last night for three weeks in that Central American country. They will be staying with Costa Rican families. They will have four hours of direct Spanish language instruction in the mornings, and then cultural activities and hikes in the rain forest in the afternoons. They will live in local households with their host families and eat traditional meals with them. It is a fully immersive experience in a Spanish-speaking world, and that is the point. They will spend one week in the Monteverde “cloud” rainforest, and then one week on the beautiful beaches off the Pacific Ocean. My wife and Julia will be there first, and then Elizabeth and I will join them later.

I have wanted this so bad for Julia. I try to speak Spanish with her, but she doesn’t yet know enough to be able to engage. That might change after a summer in Latin America. Like in many other areas, as Julia gets older I outsource it: I pay others for her education. In the first decade of her life, Julia got a huge dose of whatever I could offer her. As a teenager now, she is wary of “dad.” So time to let others take the lead as I try to semi-fade into the background.

That is what my parenting philosophy has come down to: invest heavily in the early years, get your child well launched, and then increasingly get out of the way as your child moves out into the wider world to make their mark.

I was not able to say “goodbye” to Julia yesterday before she left on her trip because I was with Elizabeth, my younger daughter, for a soccer tournament out of town. We are staying in a hotel with all of Elizabeth’s soccer teammates and playing matches this weekend in nearby fields. This was just a matter of bad timing, but I like the fact that I am elsewhere as Julia departs. My wife and I helped set up (and pay for) the Costa Rica experience but the trip is all about her. So I am content from a distance to wish Julia well as she steps up and takes charge of maximizing her opportunities for learning and growth in Central America. It is her trip, not mine. While she was preparing to leave for the airport, I texted Julia the following:

Get ready for your grand adventure, my beloved oldest daughter. This will be the first of many in your life. 😘 I’ll see you in Playa Flamingo. 💪🏻

Then I added:

You are old enough to have wings which will take you places (with parental help and support). Time to fly. 🛫

To see my daughter maturing to the point where she can manage her own affairs and take greater control over the direction of her life is IMMENSELY gratifying. Julia will fly away from the nest to soar through the skies. The future looks bright.

I am so lucky.

I feel so blessed.

Amen.