Broken Snowplows

In this episode of the Just Waiting for You podcast, join Cherese Lee as she reflects on a pivotal moment from a university orientation that made her question everything she knew about parenting. As she unveils the concept of 'snowplow parenting', listen to her personal journey grappling with this concept, and the profound impact it had on her life and her relationship with her children.

Hey, friends, Cherese Lee and you're listening to the Just Waiting for You podcast. Whether the sun is shining where you are in life today, or you're walking through a crappy storm, and you really wish you got some rain boots. The power of a story is sometimes all you need for that perspective shift. Hang out with us for a few minutes and find out what happens when you realize that someone is just waiting for you.

It's a story. It's just a story. It was the summer of 2019, and my husband and I were sitting in a large auditorium on the campus of the University of Tennessee with hundreds of other first time college parents.  It was orientation for our firstborn, David. And this parent session started out with all the usual topics, like how to help with homesickness, because it will happen, when to worry, when to not worry. Tips on managing money. Tips on managing expectations. Yours and theirs, etc. etc. 

We were getting to the point where we’re feeling the yeah, yeah, yeah we know we have five kids. We're chill.  Let's go find a Starbucks. And then the lights were dimmed, and the video started.  It was a news excerpt about snowplow parents.  Brandon and I giggled a little bit as we rolled our eyes at each other.

If there's one thing we aren't, it's helicopter parents. He and I were both raised playing outside from dawn to dusk, and we've always been quick to tell the kids to go climb the tree rather than yelling at every false move, fearful that they would fall. But this wasn’t about helicopter parenting.  No, it wasn't a helicopter at all. It was a snowplow.

And as that two-minute video played, he and I shrunk deeper and deeper into our seats. awh, man. We walked in there, all confident, thinking we knew a thing or two.  And we left that room with a new term to Google and basically questioning everything that we had done in the last 18 years prior. Woops.  Now, if you press pause and go Google that phrase, you're going to see a lot of different things.

And there's certainly degrees of this snow plowing. I mean, I don't feel like we were falling off the mountain or anything at that point.  And there's definitely a lot of areas where we weren't guilty of snowplow parenting at all. But here’s what we noticed when we got honest, and we really looked at our day to day.  While we didn't yet see the effects that the clear road was having on the kids, or at least not a lot yet, we certainly could see what driving that truck was doing to us, or more specifically for the purpose of the space, what it was doing to me.

At this point, I'd been a stay-at-home mom for a number of years, which was both a privilege and definitely the right thing for our family in that season.  And so it was both physically and emotionally draining.  Sometimes both depending on the season.  Not only did I do what you would expect a stay at home parent to do in a large family with five kids,  you know, the usual sort of keep the house, do the piles of laundry, keep the kitchen stocked, the dishes clean, the countertops clean and clean and clean, and do the bulk of the meals, make and drive to the appointments and on and on and on.

We know the spiel and, of course, made the lunches. All of them had to be different. Of course, I kept my finger on the pulse.  I mean, that’s what we're told to do in this day and age, right?  Like, I knew all of the kid’s friends. I knew all of the kid’s emotions, all the drama. And I ran ahead of every train so fast that Sir Topham Hatt himself could have only seen a speck of me up there.

Every scenario was thought through, lived through in my head, corrected, then thought through again, then actually lived through, then dissected for all the ways I handled it wrong.  Well, and then it wasn't over. Then the guilt set in because of the sadness or the stress or the discomfort that the kids felt from however it went wrong. Wash, rinse, repeat.

That's how it was. I thought I was just parenting, but really, I was consumed.  I wasn't just showing up for my kids like a loving mom. I was in the front row taking in every emotion and already stressing about the next one times five.  I was breaking my promise every day.  What promise? You ask?  Well, when I was pregnant with the first set of twins, those first three months or so of that pregnancy were just an absolute roller coaster of whether or not, honestly, we would ever get to meet those kids that I was carrying.

Our oldest was a toddler at the time, and I can remember vividly. Talk about a core memory, coming home from the O.B. one day after yet another scary visit and quickly putting David down for a nap so that I could fall apart.  I fell to the floor in the living room of our barn turned cottage and I sobbed until I could hardly breathe.

My pregnant belly was shaking, and I just screamed up to the heavens. That's it.  'm done. I'm out. I cannot do this emotionally for one more day. Not one.  I screamed and screamed and sobbed. And then when I caught my breath, I continued.  I will make you a deal. God. I will be the vessel. I will carry these babies. But that's it. That's the end of my role emotionally.

These babies are yours. I will carry them. You willing. And I will birth them.  And I'll do my best to provide a safe and loving home if you see fit. But I'm telling you right now that they are yours, not mine. Yours. Only you could handle something this hard. I’m out.

I curled up and I sobbed until I couldn’t sob anymore.  A little while later, me and my pregnant belly got up from the floor. I washed my face, and I truly did feel at peace and thankfully, would carry me for the remainder of that pregnancy.  And then, well, then I proceeded to break that promise over and over and over again until that afternoon in July of 2019, when I sat in that auditorium ready to send that toddler out into the world.

You know, there's a reason that people joke about younger siblings being raised so differently than our firsts. It's not because we love them less.  Sorry to my big brother. It's not because we're too tired to care. I mean, sometimes. yeah, but mostly no.  It's because we're learning a little something each and every day of motherhood, of life. Or some days we learn something big in an auditorium of weepy parents.

Here's what I've noticed in the four years since that day. While I pay more attention, I don't think we're meant to sit front row, center 24/7 to the becoming of our children. Maybe we aren't to run ahead at lightning speed trying to plow it all away for what we believe is their comfort.  Is it? Is it really for their comfort or is it for ours?

Are we the ones that don't want the stress of a kid’s disappointment because of what that would bring to our life?  And what happens when all of a sudden, we don't run ahead?  Do our kids feel like they're being slighted?  Because what they know as baseline parenting is actually the snowplow?  It turns out their emotions are not our emotions and as much as we want it to be true, our emotions are not their emotions.

Their failures are not our failures, but also their success is not our success.  What if the first time they walked through the scary things in life was in our home?  While they're loved and supported instead of in their first apartment, feeling completely alone.  What if we kept the promise to be the vessel and the home and we let God be God and our babies, be our babies and ourselves be ourselves? Not an extension of the kids. 

What if we let them see us fall?  So they knew it was just a part of life?  What if we let them help us up?  Would it change our relationships?  Would it make us seem more like real people in their eyes? People who have feelings, people who get hurt and mess up and keep going?

Funny little addendum to the first story. Right before Brandon and I went into the parent lecture, we had lunch with David before they split us into students and parents, and during that lunch we could tell that David had your normal going off to college jitters. He wasn't sure what he wanted to major in, and he just was a regular 18-year-old figuring out college.

And Brandon and I sat at that table in the student center, and we told him to just not worry about it. Take a gap year. Now, listen, I'm not opposed to gap years at all. I think that can be a great tool, but a panic gap here, because we didn't want him to be nervous or afraid. Oh, luckily, that strong willed child respectfully declined.

And next week, he'll graduate from the University of Tennessee. He's figured out a lot of things in four years, and it turns out so have we.  I'm sure we're all going to keep messing up, but that’s because we're all living a real human life and feeling real human feelings and leaving the snowplows in the garage. 

Thanks for joining us I hope you allow yourself to feel the things today and then have the courage to ask.  But what if you look like this?  Go forth and show up for life, my friends. Someone is just waiting for you.