It gets better

11 years ago, when I married my husband, one of the things I imagined for our future family seemed straightforward: we would take walks as a family once we had kids.

It would happen on Sundays, at the golden hour of sunlight, and we would take a spin around the block under rustling trees. We would chat and stroll.

A simple and healthy family routine.

This was my expectation and I didn’t think it was too much to ask of my life as a mom.

I mean, I wasn’t asking to live in a penthouse in Barcelona (something I fantasized about in my 20s lol).

When Cooper (my PDA son) was born, I was living in a one-bedroom apartment in Washington D.C.

I remember walking through the city streets in January, while pushing Cooper in a stroller.

I had bravely set out to begin the walk routine that I had so often imagined. Yet, I soon realized that if Cooper was in a stroller and not against my body, he would scream uncontrollably. It seemed like he was in pain.

Soon I learned that in order to get him to stop crying while also getting myself some post-partum movement, he needed to be strapped to me like a marsupial, against my skin, and often breastfeeding while I was walking. My back and core were a mess after an emergency C-section, but I kept on walking the streets, determined to get that fresh air and establish a precedent for our family walks.

Three years later, I was still trying. Even though Cooper had started to say things like “my legs don’t work” or “I can’t walk," I would incentivize him with creative things – flashlights, games, scavenger hunts, and popsicles. One time we invented a “candy fairy” who would leave skittles and M & M's along the route. But each time I made him walk, he seemed more lethargic, shutdown, and unable to get his feet to move.

Still, after William – my younger son – was born, I wanted to implement the “family walk.”

I put William in the stroller and expected Cooper to walk alongside us, as he was almost four and a half years old. He refused. We bought a stroller with a spot for him to stand on so he didn’t have to walk. Yet he would sit on the spot and drag his feet so it was harder for me to push.

When I would ask him to stop, he fixated on doing it more. It seemed reflexive and automatic, like he couldn’t stop, yet I didn't believe this. He was attention-seeking. He was defiant. He needed to learn not to do that. 

Things would escalate and by the end of these walks I would be enraged and depleted, pushing the stroller home with all my strength, while Cooper would drag his feet as hard as he could to stall my progress.

It was a metaphor for my parenting experience up until that point. Me moving in one direction, him struggling to move in the opposite one.

We moved to Michigan when Cooper was five and a half, and I signed him up for a karate class. Still working through the “sensory processing lens,” I thought this would be a fix, that he would get the sensory input he needed as a sensory seeker to regulate himself. The karate class was two blocks away from our house, and so I expected we would walk. Instead, Cooper refused. I held my ground. It felt ridiculous to get into a car to drive two blocks. And so most days we didn’t make it to karate and instead there were panic attacks and screaming.

Then there was the final straw. I was in burnout myself by this point, and I craved any opportunity to be outside (Cooper was mostly sitting on one part of the couch watching screens and not leaving the house). I asked my husband if I could walk with William to the pizza place around the corner to pick up our order.

As I was leaving, Cooper ran to the stroller and tried to prevent me from walking. I said, "Cooper, you can get on with us and come." But he wouldn’t get in and he wouldn’t let us walk. He held onto the stroller for dear life.  A cognitive loop. He had a full on fight/flight-fueled panic attack. Screaming, spitting, hissing at me when I got near him.

It finally hit me: I had to let go of the family walk. Like *actually* energetically let go of my control. And yes, I felt rage, resentment, and anger towards this constraint on my family life.

This was over four years ago.

Flash forward to last weekend, the day before school started. We were all feeling stir crazy. I turned to my husband, Jake, and said, "All I want right now is take a walk. What if we just walked to the end of the block so we could see the front door the whole time?"

He said, "What if we just 'strew' the possibility of a walk and see if the kids want to come?"

"Oooh, maybe we could offer to pull them in the wagon!?" It was an exciting possibility, but I reminded myself to stay unattached. That this was a true "offering." 

To our surprise, they both enthusiastically said “yes” and suddenly we were on a family walk (with a very full wagon)!

We saw sandhill cranes in the cemetery near our house. We greeted a squirrel that we named “Frank Funk” who followed us for a while. We saw deer in the woods.

It was a perfect almost-fall evening, with just a few leaves starting to turn red and orange. The golden hour sunlight was wonderful. 

Jake and I talked, taking turns pulling the heavy wagon behind us, while pausing so the boys could pick up sticks to drag on the cement, whittling spears as the wagon rolled. 

Our walk was perfect and beautiful.

However, this was not because Cooper and William walked alongside us and made reciprocal conversation about their feelings and innermost thoughts (HA!). They didn’t.

They engaged in sensory seeking, silliness, and constantly made noises to interrupt and drown out our conversation. They fought over the sizes of their sticks. The whittling made the already heavy wagon harder to pull. By the end of the walk, Jake was pulling Cooper on one side of the street and I was racing home with William because the “togetherness” had come to its logical end when the equalizing began.

The years of accommodating have helped Cooper immensely, to the point where he often wants to join in activities with us. And he is still PDA.

So we have found creative ways to accommodate AND (much of the time) get everyone’s needs met. That requires letting some things go. 

This weekend we let go of what the neighbors think about us pulling an almost ten-year-old and his almost 6-year-old brother around the neighborhood. (We know some think we're weird.)

We let go of most of what I once fantasized our family walks would look like. 

We let go of how our lives would unfold.  

What will you let go of this weekend?