I’ve long believed that the key to being a good parent is accepting (and embracing) your children for who they are. This means that no matter how much you love football—and no matter how much you’ve dreamed of spending Sundays on the couch watching the NFL with your son and then watching your son play football himself—if your son has an affinity for musical theater and Bette Midler, you need to be okay with that. In short: we can’t hold our children hostage to our own dreams and expectations. Their lives are not ours to live.


I always thought this would be the one area of parenting at which I would excel. I would proclaim loudly to anyone who would listen that I would love and support my children no matter what path they strode or stumbled down. If they decide they want to be circus performers, I’ll be the first to sign them up for carnie lessons. I see so many parents (especially in the uber-competitive world of Washington, DC) who seem to have their children’s futures mapped out for them with total disregard for the child’s own interests. I talked to a mother of three the other day whose children are all under the age of nine, yet she’s worried about how few high school seniors from Northern Virginia schools are accepted into the University of Virginia. As a result, she’s getting her kids on the honor track and scoping out which schools are the most successful so they’re more likely to be competitive when they graduate. I nodded commiseratively, but wanted to ask, “But what if your children have no interest in going to UVA, or any other college for that matter?”


So I pat myself on the back and tell myself how I will allow my kids to create their own futures and be their own people. As a result, they will be happy and successful in their own right.


And then I turn around and find myself pushing my kids to do things they don’t want to do.


Case in point: Thanks to the generosity of Dave’s dad, we spent the last six days in the Colorado mountains. Last year we did the same, when Noah and Gwyneth took snowboarding and skiing lessons respectively. Noah loved it. Gwyneth, not so much. But after some discussion (yes, that’s what I’m calling it, rather than “prodding” which might be more accurate), she decided that this year she would like to try snowboarding. Skiing might not be for her, but snowboarding most certainly could be.


Uh, yeah.


Both Dave and I were nervous about sending Gwyneth, who favors the climate-controlled indoors to snow and a high of 15 degrees, and tutus and halter tops to long underwear and ski pants. When we took her backpacking for the first time this summer, I was careful to let her wear whatever she wanted on the trail. When she stepped out of her bedroom in a mini-skirt and spaghetti-strap tank top, Dave said, “Sweetie, you might want to wear long pants and a t-shirt.”


“But this is prettier,” she replied.


I pulled Dave aside and whispered, “Let it go. If she associates backpacking with ugly clothes, she’ll never want to go again.”


Then there’s just the fact that she’s not too enthusiastic about going into environments where she doesn’t know anyone. This is probably the way in which she and Noah differ the most. Noah could make friends at an anthrophobia conference. He’ll strike up a conversation with anyone, adult or child, and be exchanging phone numbers by the end. Once, when he was four, he introduced himself to the couple sitting next to us outside a Baskin Robbins…asking them how old their daughter was and telling them about how he and his sister were only 16 months apart. At the end, the husband shook his hand and said, “Well, Noah, it was a pleasure meeting you. I think you’ve got a future in sales.”


Gwyneth has always been shyer. Strangers to her are, well, strange. And new situations are unpredictable and a little scary.


But she said she wanted to take snowboarding lessons, and, in truth, we really wanted her to. Both Dave and I have been skiing since we were eight years old (Dave grew up skiing three days a week, having the good fortune of living just 15 minutes from a ski area) and love pretty much everything that has to do with the mountains. We want our kids to have the same love.


Does that sound suspiciously like an expectation?


So we woke up early Wednesday morning and suited up the kids in their 85 layers of snow gear and drove to the base of the ski area, where we waited in an excruciatingly long line to check in for lessons, then rent helmets and boots and boards. As we waited for the helmet and boot fitting, I could see Gwyneth’s confidence begin to erode. She started hanging on my leg, looking up at me with eyes that were growing increasingly bigger, tears rimming the edges. “I’m scared,” she told me.


First, I tried the confident, no-nonsense approach. “Oh, you’re fine, sweetie. You’ll be okay.”


Then we waited in another line to get her board. Gwyneth’s grasp on my leg was growing tighter, her eyes wider. Again, she told me she was scared. This time I tried the affirmation approach. “I know it’s scary meeting new people. I get that way, too. But you can be scared and still try new things, right?”


I could tell this wasn’t working, so I told her to give me her hands and I would put kisses in them, and she could put those kisses in her pockets, and then when she was lonely, she could pull the kisses out and put them on her cheeks.


This seemed to bolster her, but only slightly. Not near enough for the terror of drop off, which was looming.
Helmet, boots, and board in hand, I took her to where the instructors were standing in front of an elevator. I would say goodbye to her there, I told her, and she would take the elevator upstairs to a room where the other kids would be.


The whole elevator thing seemed like a serious design flaw. If Gwyneth had been able to see a room full of kids, she probably would have been more willing to go. But sending her on an elevator? Here, little girl, get on this elevator with a complete stranger to take you to a place you can’t even see. I couldn’t blame her for being reluctant. But I put on my most positive face, and confidently walked her to the elevator, where a 20-something man greeted us. I knew this would mean trouble. Gwyneth loves women. If a cute, pig-tailed, 19-year-old woman had greeted us, I think Gwyneth would have been much more willing to go. But a man? And not a father- or grandfather-like man, but a snowboarding dude with a soul patch. This won’t go well, I thought. “It’s going to be fine,” I told Gwyneth. “You ready?”


Gwyneth looked up at me and the tears that had rimmed her eyes for the last 15 minutes tumbled down her cheeks. Her mouth opened into a full scream. “Mommy! I don’t want to go!” Her hands covered her face and she started sobbing uncontrollably.


“Gwyneth,” I said, kneeling down to meet her face, “it’s okay. I know you’re scared, but it’s going to be okay. You can do this.”


Her sobs only intensified. What killed me was that I could tell she didn’t want to cry. She was wiping away her tears as fast as they came to her eyes and trying really hard to stop, but she couldn’t. There’s nothing more heartbreaking than watching a child trying desperately to control him or herself, and losing. It feels mature beyond their years. They shouldn’t have to act so grown up when their bodies are so little. “I’m scared, Mommy!” she kept saying. “I don’t want to go!”


I hugged her, trying to comfort her, but it was useless. I knew the only thing that would make her feel better was to tell her, “Okay, you don’t have to go. Let’s leave and get some hot chocolate.” But what would I be teaching her if I did that? The fact is, throughout our lives we’re faced with new and scary situations, and running away isn’t an option. I think of how often I’ve walked into a conference room or an interview or a cocktail party and felt my heart rate spike and my throat go dry. I hate it, but I go anyway because I know bailing would hurt my career or someone’s feelings. Sucking it up is, quite frankly, a really good skill to have. This was a chance for Gwyneth to learn that.


But she’s five, not fifteen. Was I pushing her too fast too soon?


The snowboard instructor stood there looking at us. I gave him an “oh-boy-I-bet-you-have-this-happen-all-the-time” smile that was met with a blank “holy-shit-what-the-hell-do-I-do” stare. The poor guy was terrified. I looked back at Gwyneth. “Honey, I know you can do this. It’s time to go. Do you want to push the button on the elevator?”


She looked at me with absolute, sheer terror in her eyes—like I was a Nazi asking her to flip the switch on the gas chamber. “Noooooo,” she sobbed.


“Okay,” I told her. “Then I’m going to do it. And when the elevator comes, you’ll have to get on it, okay?”


She grabbed onto my coat. By this point she was hyperventilating. “Can you [gasp, gasp, gasp] go [gasp, gasp, gasp] with me?”


“No, sweetie, I can’t. See the sign?” I pointed to a sign next to the elevator. “It says ‘Parent-Free Zone.’ I have to say goodbye to you here. But I’ll pick you up at three o’clock. Okay?”


I pressed the button to the elevator. The doors opened.


She was still crying, but, without any more words from me, she walked into the elevator with her instructor. I waved goodbye to her and blew her a kiss. The doors closed and I could hear her sobs behind it.


I turned around to find Dave, who had dropped off a very happy Noah at his class, and arrived just in time to see the tail end of Gwyneth’s tearful goodbye.


“Jesus,” he said.


“I know.”


“That was awful,” he said.


“I know.”


“Do you think she’s going to be okay?”


I shrugged. “They’ll call if she isn’t, I guess.”


We walked away somberly. We spent the rest of the day cross-country skiing together—enjoying our kid-free date as much as we could. But Gwyneth’s sobs were a constant companion. We talked about whether we’d done the right thing. “If I knew for sure that she was going to have fun once she got going, I wouldn’t feel so bad,” I told Dave. “But I’m just not sure that’s going to happen. I worry she’s going to hate it.”


But more than that was the other issue this raised for me: the worry that I might very well have a daughter who isn’t tough, who doesn’t like to ski or snowboard, who doesn’t like to hike and camp, who doesn’t like the mountains, who doesn’t (God forbid) like horses. It’s possible, right? Dave’s and my genes aside, she could very well decide that she prefers asphalt and air conditioning to the great outdoors and animals. And, seriously, as I write that, my heart sinks.


And I tell myself it shouldn’t matter. What about the whole accepting and embracing thing? That doesn’t just mean accepting and embracing a child who prefers Emily Dickinson over Edna St. Vincent Millay; or who supported Hillary instead of Barack; or who loves warmbloods instead of Thoroughbreds. That means accepting a child whose interests and values are fundamentally different than my own. A child who is a conservative, fundamentalist Christian who thinks Glenn Beck is the smartest man alive. A child who becomes a member of PETA and thinks riding and competing horses is inhumane. A child who would rather spend her day in the mountains indoors playing board games than on the slopes.


These are the possibilities that I need to accept and embrace.


As the day wore on, Dave and I checked our phones about a hundred times, waiting for the voicemail that said, “Gwyneth is in the fetal position in the corner. You need to come pick her up.”


But that didn’t happen. Instead, at 2:30, we made our way to the lesson hill, where we could watch Noah and Gwyneth demonstrate their newly honed shredding skills. As we approached, Dave and I braced each other: “There’s a good chance she won’t even be outside. They might have just let her stay in and color. I hope she doesn’t see us and burst into tears.”


To our surprise, we arrived at the hill to find Gwyneth riding the Magic Carpet (a short moving walkway) up the hill. She saw us and waved enthusiastically. “Mom!” she yelled across the snow. “I can snowboard, Mom! Watch!” She got off the walkway, cut in front of the boy standing in her way, sat in the snow, took off her gloves, and buckled her boot onto her board. She then pushed herself up and started gliding down the mountain—arms out, legs bent in a squat, looking straight down the hill. At the bottom, she rocked back onto her board, spraying some snow as she stopped.

She turned to Dave and me and yelled, “Did you watch me?”


“Yes!” we called back, giving her a thumbs up. “That was great!”


She did it again. And again. And again. After the instructor said it was time to stop and all the other kids took off their boards, Gwyneth asked to go one more time. And she did.


Afterwards, we talked to the instructor, who told us Gwyneth cried for the first 45 minutes after I dropped her off. He said he kept trying to distract her with other things, but she would have none of it. Eventually, she just walked over into a corner by herself, sat down, and cried for 10 minutes. After that, she walked over and joined the other kids and became his most enthusiastic student. When we asked her if she wanted to take lessons the next day, she didn’t waver before telling us, “Yes!”


I realize this doesn’t mean much of anything. As I said earlier, she’s only five. As time wears on, she might decide that she really doesn’t like snowboarding. Or skiing. Or the cold, or the mountains, or the outdoors. Noah might discover these things, too. But for now, I don’t have to worry about that. For now, I’ve got a daughter and son who love to snowboard. I’ve got a daughter and son who love to camp and love horses and love being outside. If someday they decide none of these things are for them, I’ll make sure to accept and embrace them. But for right now, I’m going to enjoy watching them shred the slopes.


[Noah on the slopes:]