Sometimes runaway trains are headed somewhere beautiful

​There are two extreme ends of parenting, I suspect.

One, you have an idea of who you want your child to become and you then operate under some level of expectation and even insistence that they become that person.

Your job as a parent is to keep them on the path to becoming your vision.

Two, and the alternative, even if the extreme other end of the spectrum, is you trust there is someone beautiful inside that child, a beauty you can't begin to imagine - or even try to, really - and you do everything in the world to let them know how excited you are to see who they will become.

Your job as a parent is to create a sense of safety that welcomes who they are becoming.

I don't know if I would have articulated it that way when I became a dad, but I like to think I've subscribed to the second way of parenting.

Oh, trust me, there were days when expectations and insistence reared their ugly heads; they were easy fall backs when what my boys were becoming looked like me becoming the victim of a train wreck.

In those moments, it's easy to think someone needs to activate the emergency brakes on the train!!

Sure, I know, there are some times the train needs braked. But when it comes to our kids, I've come to believe it's better to start with accepting a runaway train. Slam the brakes on that train enough times and you'll slam the brakes on a kid.

I spend a lot of time with struggling adults these days who never got to be runaway trains as kids.

There have been times over the last couple of years when I've worried about my youngest. By worrying, I mean I've wondered if there shouldn't have been - shouldn't be - more heavy handed, tough love insistence and expectation in his life.

But we spent a weekend away together at a lacrosse tournament this weekend and all of that wondering disappeared. At least for the weekend 😊.

We got to the tournament a little early yesterday. Ian ran off to the field ahead of me. I stood in the parking lot watching him run off when I heard a voice say, "he's a great young man."

I looked around and found a head sticking out the window of a truck. It was Ian's coach. He went on to say a lot of nice things about Ian the athlete, but I couldn't quit hearing "he's a great young man."

We chatted for several minutes. Then I went to find Ian. He was sitting on the wet lacrosse field by himself watching the game he loves. And I told him, "your coach just told me something that makes me more proud as a dad than anything I might see you do on that field today, he told me you're a good young man."

Then I told him I was proud of him.

Here's the thing, when the coach told me that, I didn't think I'm raising a good young man, I said a prayer of thanks for all the people, like that coach, who've been a part of creating safe spaces for that kid to unfold.

Too often we let who our kids are becoming be a measure of our parental job performance. And if we have some expectation of who we think they should become, and they are falling short of that, we can quickly surmise we are falling short as parents.

And go way too heavy on expectations and insistence, which quite often looks opposite of trusting there is something beautiful inside that kid.

I watched Ian play yesterday morning after my conversation with his coach. I didn't cheer, I simply celebrated what I was watching unfold.

Sometimes we need to stop the train. I get that. But I don't think stopping the train is our weakness as parents many times. Our weakness is trusting the runaway train is heading to somewhere more beautiful than we can imagine.

If we'll just let the train go.

More often than we give ourselves grace for, parents, runaway trains aren't warning signs of poor parenting, they are simply signals on the track that frankly our kids are often better at reading than we are.

Let them read.

This morning, I am beyond grateful for all the people in my kids' lives who create the safe places that welcome all that they are becoming, and for the times in doing so they might feel for a moment they've been runover by a train.

Thank you all for taking that hit. Chances are you don't get paid enough for that or get enough appreciation for that. My hope is, that like me, it's rewarding enough to hear - "he's a great young man."