The Ruth Tooth Extraction
This was Carter when he was seven years old.
For a week prior to this video, I was coaching and bribing and coaxing Carter into trying to pull his loose tooth out. I’m not sure why he was so fearful of pulling his tooth out. Maybe it was the fear of it hurting. Maybe it was the fear of it possibly bleeding. Maybe it was the fear of change. I even told him that I would tie a string to his tooth and attach it to my car and hit the gas to rip it out. But that didn’t work either. (Actually, that probably made his fear worse.) Whatever it was, Carter would not even attempt to try to pull his tooth out.
So, each night, for seven straight days, I would ask him… “Are you ready yet? Do you think your tooth is ready yet?” And for seven straight evenings he would reply with a, “No.” No follow up questions. Don’t pass go. This tooth ain’t ready. Carter knew the tooth was going to come out. He had lost two teeth before… two teeth that literally fell out on their own because the adult tooth pushed them straight out. So he knew that, at some point, the tooth was going to be “lost.”
You see, he wanted this one to be different. He, deep down, wanted to pull this one out on his own. He wanted to be the one to pull the tooth out and not let it simply be pushed out by the adult tooth coming in. But, he was scared. He knew that what he wanted to do was good. It was natural. And it was needed for the next step to occur. But still, night after night… day after day he was scared and wasn’t ready…
Until the night of the video.
That night, he said… “I think I want to try dad.” And, like any good dad would say, I said, “Wait, let me get my phone to record it coming out!” The video that you watched is just one minute and 11 seconds. The actual time the it took from start to finish to get the tooth out… just over two hours. Two hours of coaching. Two hours of encouraging. Two hours of making jokes to ease his nerves. Two hours of standing by his side and he pushed through the fear to extract that “fiesty” tooth as he put it.
This isn’t the first time that Carter has been scared to try to accomplish something. And it’s not going to be the last. My job as a parent is to stand by him and help him push past the fear if he chooses. To let him know that I’m by his side, cheering him on.
As a parent, we can see the other side. We can see that everything will be ok. It’s so easy to get frustrated by that. To not understand where they are at in their fear and to only focus on the end goal. But as a child, they can’t see that end goal. They can only see the immediate place where they’re at… fear. It’s our job to help them walk through that place to come out on the other side not only ok, but also a better person having learned to walk to the other side of fear, despite their fear.
You know, God does the same thing with us as well. Sure, he doesn’t physically hold our hand. But He’s right there beside us giving us comfort as we walk to the other side of our fear, despite our fear. Check this out:
Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. Joshua 1:9
Our God has promised to be with us wherever we go. Whether it’s during this time of quarantine or after, our God will never leave us. He is there. For you. For me. For us. As you walk with your child through their fears, despite their fears, know that our God is doing the same with us… through our fears, despite our fears.
Bike Rides Funnel Cakes & the Mess
I'm sitting here at home, on my couch, looking for a moment I wanted to share with all of you.
I knew I had posted it on Facebook. But for some reason, I thought it happened about two years ago. But no, it was five years ago! FIVE! In the grand scheme of things, five years isn’t that long. But when your kids reach a certain age, five years is forever ago. The amount of change that happens between five years is, CA-RA-ZY. Anyways, side tangent over.
Morgan has ALWAYS loved to ride bikes. Still does. Five years ago she would ask all the time. Like… Every. Single. Day. As a parent, you love your kids. But there comes a time when you just need, well, you need a break. This was one of those times. The day before, she had asked to ride bikes when I got home. And, well, since it was raining I said no, we couldn’t do it. She asked why. My response, “Sweetie, it’s raining. If we go for a bike ride now, we’ll get all wet. Our legs and shoes and clothes will get all muddy. We’ll be a mess. Let’s see what the weather is like tomorrow.” I could tell she was disappointed. But I just didn’t want to clean up that mess. And, I needed a break from riding bikes (my seat is terrible).
The next day rolls around. I’m driving home and it starts to rain. As I walk in the house, Mo comes running up to me and asks, “Can we go for a bike ride?” And in my head I’m thinking, “Our clothes are gonna get wet. Our shoes might get ruined. We’ll definitely get muddy. It’s gonna be a huge mess.” But when I get done thinking those things, I start thinking, “We’ll definitely get wet. It’s not cold out, it’s the middle of June. There’s no thunder or lightening. This is something I’d love to have done as a kid. We’ll definitely have fun. And it’s memories they’ll have for sure.” So I say to Mo, “It’s raining.” She says, “Awwww.” To which I said, “Wanna go for a bike ride IN THE RAIN?” Mo and Carter at the same time asked, “CAN WE?” And I said, “Absolutely! Get your bikes.”
Did we get wet? 100 percent. We were soaked. Were we muddy? Absolutely. I made sure we rode through all of the puddles. Did our shoes get ruined? I have no clue. I just know that as we were riding through our neighborhood, there was nonstop giggles and fun. It’s something they still talk about five years later. It was an absolute mess. But it was worth it.
Fast forward five years. Carter shows Jami and I a TikTok video of a guy making homemade funnel cakes, deep fried Oreos and deep fried Reese's Cups. My first thought, man, this could be a real mess. Two inches of vegetable oil in a pan. A 15 year old in charge of this little project. And powdered sugar. What could go wrong? We literally put this experiment off for a couple of days. But there was no chance that he was gonna forget about this. So, we said ok. And, it turned out to be a mess. We had dishes all over the kitchen. Powdered sugar everywhere (mostly because of me). Burnt chocolate smell. Like I said. It was a mess. But, Carter loved getting it ready, following the instructions, and watching what he did actually work. It was fun. He was successful at what he set out to do. And we made memories.
There have been times throughout the years that we have said no to things our kids wanted to do because we knew that there would be a giant mess to clean up. I wish I had those times back, honestly. In the last five years, we’ve begun to intentionally said yes to things (like our Christmas Dinner Christmas Card) because we know that sometimes the moment means more than the mess. The memories that will be created in the moment you have with your children will far outweigh the mess that it creates. And I want more memory-filled moments in our house… even if it creates a huge mess.
It’s ok to have a mess. Because the moment means more than the mess.
Morgan, Carter and Me. June 14, 2015. This moment meant more than the mess.
Tales from the Passenger Seat: 3 Lessons I Learned Teaching My 15 Year Old How to Drive
I still can't believe I'm at this point in my life.
It still feels like yesterday that I became a father for the first time. Standing over Carter as the nurses were cleaning him up. But it wasn’t. It was 15 years ago. Actually, it was 15 years, three months and 25 days. And now, I find myself sitting in the passenger seat helping him drive… and not just drive… but drive safely.
I mean, pretty much anyone his age and older can drive. They can push the gas pedal and move the steering wheel. But can they drive safely? That’s the question. We’ve all been in a vehicle with someone wondering when they were going to kill everyone… everyone in the car, in other cars, on sidewalks. We’ve all been in situations where as soon as we got out of the vehicle safely we thanked the Lord the ride was done. You’re currently thinking of that person right now. I know I am.
And so now, at this time in my life, I’m willingly getting into the passenger’s seat and teaching my 15 year old how to navigate the streets behind the wheel safely. We started on the neighborhood streets. Skipped right over the parking lot. If I’m gonna teach him how to drive, I’m gonna go a little bigger at the start. I mean, my enneagram number is seven, it’s what we sevens do, right. We’re positive, confident, enthusiastic and, well, adventurous. So skipping the parking lot and diving straight to our neighborhood streets is, well, quite fitting. And it was fine, he didn’t bounce off of any cars and did a great job. I was super impressed with how he handled things.
As we drove together more, I thought I’d be doing all the teaching. But I’ve learned a few things as the drivers training has progressed. And so, I wanted to share a few of the things I’ve learned while teaching my 15 year old how to drive:
- Asking questions is better than giving him the answers. During our time driving together, he eventually asks questions like, “Is this close enough to the stop sign?” And to this question I’m tempted to give him the answer - to tell him what I think based upon my experience. And I suppose that’s ok. But I won’t be in the passenger seat next to him every time he drives. At some point, he’ll be behind the wheel by himself and I want him to feel confident to think for himself. So instead of saying yes or no to this question, I ask him, “Can you see traffic coming from your left and right?” And if he answers no then my question back to him is, “What do you think you need to do to see better?” And without saying a word, he creeps up closer. And then it hit me, this is true in life as well. He’s 15. Morgan is 13. I’m a pretty Type A personality. Pretty intense. I have no problem giving answers. But, just like with Carter and driving, there will be a time where I won’t be in the passenger seat with them in life. My job as a parent has reached a point where it’s not just my job to give them answers. It’s now my job to help them come up with the right answers themselves so that when I’m not there to help them navigate life, they’ll be able to make the right and good decisions. It’s a shift in thinking. It’s a shift in parenting.
- He’s gonna hit things that he doesn’t know to look out for. After a few days of driving Carter was doing well. He was driving along, demonstrating good awareness. Focusing on what he should be focusing on. And during this time, as you would suspect, I’m riding in the passenger seat but my focus is still on heightened alert like I was driving. So as we’re moving along, I’m scanning the oncoming traffic, checking my passenger mirror and monitoring who’s behind us… and… monitoring the actual road we’re driving on. Then, quite literally out of nowhere a huge pothole pops up. I see it, and as a driver I would have been able to navigate around it. But Carter didn’t see it. So like any sane father would do, I started saying, “Hole, hole, hole, HOLE.” Getting progressively louder on each “hole” that comes out of my mouth. And, on the fourth “hole” I try to grab the wheel to swerve to the right. But, because this was all happening all so fast, Carter grabbed the wheel tighter and didn’t let me pull the wheel to the right… and boom. Tire meets hole. It turned out to be ok. It was a deep pothole, but luckily didn’t do any damage. I said a couple of choice words. We pulled into a church parking lot to turn around and take a pause so I could explain what else Carter should be scanning. Us hitting the pothole wasn’t Carter’s fault. What he was focusing on was right and good. But he wasn’t aware of the potholes that are sure to come. Potholes that literally pop up out of nowhere. To him, prior to this pothole, the street was supposed to be smooth. Not potentially hazardous. He simply didn’t know that there can be and will mostly likely be potholes right where he will be driving. It was my job to teach him about the potholes that could lie ahead on the street. To be scanning for those as well and how to navigate around them. And that’s true with life as well. There will be potholes that will pop up. And he’ll need to be aware of those and look for a way to navigate around them. In the car, you have a steering wheel to get around them. In life, in my opinion, the steering wheel that will help navigate around life’s potholes is the Word of God… the Bible - "Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path." - Psalm 119: 105. As we were pulling out of the parking lot to make our way back onto the road, Carter said to me, “I didn’t know why you were grabbing the wheel, so I was like, I just held tight and wouldn’t let you turn it because I didn’t know what you were doing.” Hahahahahaha… good instincts… never let a crazy person who’s yelling grab the wheel.
- Checking your mirrors before a lane change is always a good idea. Prior to driving and as we were driving in and around the neighborhood I was giving Carter advice on how to change lanes… what I do. One thing I’ve realized is that the decisions for this type of thing are really made a split second apart from each other… Here’s how it goes for me… “I need to change lanes. Check rearview mirror. Check side mirror. Look over my shoulder. Turn on turn signal. Check side mirror. Look over my shoulder. Go.” It happens almost simultaneously. And so I explained this to Carter. A couple of times. And so, I was like, “Ok, let’s get some experience.” We get out on SR 23 and I tell him I need him to change lanes. And boom. Not boom in a bad way. Calm down. Boom… like boom, he did it perfectly. The next day, we go out again. Same road. Same thing. I tell him I need him to change lanes. He says ok. And this time I find myself moving from the left lane into the right lane… no checking mirrors, no looking over his shoulder. He essentially changed lanes blind. Now, I’m not that stupid. I made sure that there weren’t any cars around us prior to telling him I needed to change lanes. I did know that a car was a ways back in the right lane and figured he wouldn’t check his mirrors prior to changing lanes. So it was a good lesson, because after he changed lanes, I had him look in his rearview mirror. And I asked him, in a rather straightforward and stern manner what would have happened if that car was beside him when he changed lanes. He got the point. The same holds true for life. There will be times where we’ll have a decision to make. And that decision will likely be a change of lanes. It’s not a good idea to simply change lanes. You want to check your mirrors. Ask questions. Do some research on what that lane change means. Make sure to the best of your ability that the lane change won’t lead to a devastating outcome. Talk to people. Seek counsel. Use your mirrors. That’s what they’re there for.
I’ve loved teaching Carter how to drive. It’s been an eye opening experience. And I'll love continuing to teach him. He's done a great job so far. I just can’t believe that we’re already here, but I wouldn’t trade this time in for the world. There really isn’t a better, more important job on the planet than helping a child, yours or otherwise, learn how to navigate life and grow as a human being. It’s not easy. But anything great isn’t.