2022 Archive

The Dance Of The In-Between

16 November

All the world's a stage, 

And all the men and women merely players: 

They have their exits and their entrances.

(Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It,’ Act II scene vii)

I remember leaving home, so clearly. I was eighteen and bulletproof. My father stood at the top of the red brick stairs holding the hand of my little sister, Jill – aged five. He looked forlorn. Just as I was loading my desk into the boot of an overloaded Subaru station wagon, he called out. ‘Say goodbye to your sister, she doesn’t understand why you are leaving.’ And, in the midst of my heady excitement of moving out and on, I realised, with a fleeting moment of insight that it wasn’t my little sister Jill who was confused about my leaving, it was actually my father who wondered why I was exiting the home stage. At the time, I was a bit surprised – here was the most exciting point in my life thus far (or so I thought) and he was sad, caught unwittingly in the dance of the in-between. I wondered why he wasn’t as excited as me, or for me. I will never forget that moment. That vision of my father, struggling to let go, has revisited me on the countless occasions I have farewelled my own children – invariably as they were heading off on their seemingly impulsive overseas trips with their multi-stamped passports in hand, backpacks bulging and faces alight with the promise of the new. It is in that moment that I came to understand the tug between independence and dependence, and the sense of being uncomfortably wedged between two competing constructs. 

No-one prepares you for the joy/grief cycle of parenting or the dance of the in-between, do they? It would seem that so much focus is given to the Year 12 year, as if, having achieved the ultimate highs and lows of such a time that life might resume its pre-Senior rhythm. Not so. We are all raising adolescents whose main aim in life right now is … independence, the ability to define themselves separately from their parents and to thrive in the process. Autonomy is vital if young adults are to believe that their choices and actions matter (Harris, 2022). Yet watching our children become or seek to become autonomous can be a confronting reality, because we would like to hold on for just a little bit longer. We would like to be needed for things other than car advice or wallet opening or loan negotiations. We would like to regain the equilibrium of the pre-adolescent state, even just for a moment: wouldn’t we?

Perhaps not. Perhaps you are braver and wiser than me and more stoic in the face of departures. Perhaps you have learned to manage through the various exits and entrances of life, more robustly. Yet, I am always struck by the bitter sweetness of our Year 12 cohort, finishing. Right now, they are vacillating between brief moments of insight – appreciation for friendships, for parental belief in them and for the care of their teachers and, at other times, indicating their casual, sometimes brutal indifference or displaying energetically, their desperation to ‘get out’ – deeming that life beyond Palm Drive will be so much richer, more liberated, and more exciting – we hope it is. This is the time of the dance in-between. Every teen goes through it but that does not stop us as parents from wondering if it is only our child and it is only us who are feeling like on-lookers rather than participants in this elaborate performance.

The silver lining is, of course, that this is but a phase, a time, a universal period that parents invariably face – differently, at different times, but face, nonetheless: lest our adolescents never step across the threshold into adulthood. And so how do we manage such a time – we bravely inhale the moments of joy; the delight we have when we feel their enthusiasm for their new life, see their deep connections with friends and almost touch their palpable excitement about the tomorrows ahead. We remember our own energy-infused delight at moving on and out of the ‘captivity’ of uniforms, bells, and regimes. We seek to enjoy and embrace this time as special, important, and alive. There is nothing humdrum about the dance of the in-between, it is vibrant, capricious, and all-consuming. Let us embrace it, learn its steps, join in – for we shall not pass this way again.

Thank you to our Year 12 parents for sharing a part of this journey with us – we pray for all that lies ahead – far, far beyond the dance of the in-between.

Dr Linda Evans | Principal

Patience

7 September

“Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind.” (David G Allen)

What is the best piece of advice your parent has given you? What is the voice in your head that directs you to act in a particular way, holds you firm to a value or gives you wisdom when confronted by difficulty? What is the best advice you have given your child or children? When Gai Waterhouse was asked recently for the best piece of advice her father, trainer, TJ Smith gave her, her reply was swift – “he told me to be patient.” Implicit in the notion of patience is the idea of waiting, the delay of gratification, and the ability to endure - even the toughest of circumstances. 

Waterhouse, as the first female trainer to win the Melbourne Cup, understands patience better than most. It does not mean there was any lack of urgency, low bar of expectations, or a relinquishment of drive - quite the reverse, really. It meant she had no such word as ‘can’t’, it meant she was persistent at banging the glass ceiling until it cracked and possessed a determination to wear others down. Patience does not mean standing stationary. Without patience, and a willingness to persist, Gai Waterhouse would not have carried the Melbourne Cup in the boot of her car for three months, following her epic win. Without her mantra, to keep getting on and doing it, and her willingness to see adversity as an opportunity for growth and an opportunity to appreciate that growth, she would have followed a different pathway. She says, “sometimes you win, sometimes you rise.”

Of course, the advice we give is best seen in our actions, not our words. I watched the Matildas lose with grace to the Canadian women’s soccer team on Saturday afternoon. Down by one goal very early on in the match, the Matildas were patient in seeking opportunities to even and then better the score. They were also persistent and determined. No doubt they will rise from the opportunity to play and lose against one of the world’s best soccer teams. But what struck me most were the Matildas who were waiting for a spot on the field. They were warming up with focus, each half, practising drills and repeating sprint patterns. They were waiting, waiting for their call up to take to the action. Not all got that call up. No doubt within them there was high anticipation and hope surging – and in the midst of that hope and anticipation, they too were learning patience. Sometimes patience is about waiting for an opportunity that might not arrive or might arrive in different packaging and at a different time. It is a skill worthy of our attention. 

Consider the school week that has just passed and with it, the joy of a Junior School Showcase where our girls from Prep to Year 6 presented snippets from their Music/Drama/Dance classes, along with performances from the Junior Strings, Junior Band, Choirs, and the Middle School Voices Choir. It was an Arts feast and a beautiful celebration of ‘becoming’ – becoming confident on stage, becoming confident with self-expression, and becoming part of a team or group with a collective goal in mind. One cannot decide which Prep girl twirling her chiffon scarf as she danced across stage will become a ballerina or an accomplished dancer, nor which choir member will continue to sing publicly throughout her life – and neither should one. Patience is, after all, the calm acceptance that things can and do happen in a different order than the one we have in mind. It is often about simultaneously setting expectations and abandoning them when they become too prescriptive, too detailed, and too unrealistic.

My [then teenage] son, watching me proof-reading Year 1 reports many years ago was stunned by the number of descriptors for each student. With a mix of tongue in cheek and genuine disbelief, he said, “Why don’t they just write – this is Lucy, she is five years old, she’s fabulous – let’s just see how she goes.” There is a lot in that, isn’t there? Yes, the calm acceptance that we, and especially our youngest people, are still becoming … they become who they are over a lifetime, and we need to be patient. All our hopes and intent will not and cannot dictate the path of that becoming. So many factors influence our pathways, our successes and our setbacks, and our ability and interest in learning and improving. The Gai Waterhouses of the world have achieved through dogged persistence and sheer hard work, more than through talent or opportunity. Early mornings, long nights, self-reflection, and the willingness to do things differently, all have their place. So too does patience, the ability to accept the pattern of things, the readiness to wait, and having the faith to believe in the becoming process – the process of a lifetime.

Sometimes we win. Sometimes, we rise within ourselves, when we calmly accept that life rarely follows the order that we imagine for ourselves, or for our children. Patience is indeed a virtue worth acquiring.

Dr Linda Evans | Principal

She’s coming back…

12 August

No one ever really warned me that raising an adolescent girl would be difficult. Or perhaps I just chose not to listen to comments from seasoned parents that tended to sound like, ‘Just wait until adolescence kicks in,’ ‘She’ll eventually come back [to you],’ ‘Don’t hold your breath waiting for that cute little girl to return,’ or, the barely reassuring, ‘Good luck!’ I think that I was under some sort of naïve impression that there would be an easy transition from sharing picture books, to learning to ride a push bike and navigating Tamagotchi deaths, into the tumultuous world of a teenager.

Perhaps I even imagined, foolishly, that having shared my entire adult life with adolescents on a daily basis, I would be insightful enough to pre-empt conflict, maintain razor-sharp boundaries and enjoy a mature relationship with my daughter. God taught me otherwise.

American writer, Samuel Goodrich (2011) states insightfully that ‘there is so much of us vested into our relationships with our children. Hopes and fears, ardent wishes and anxious apprehensions are twisted together in the threads that connect parent with child!’

In our quest to fulfil our hopes for our children, we become expert script writers, constructing their futures in beautiful phrases, sculpting their opportunities and, sometimes, forgetting to include their voice and their choice in the way the text unfolds. We become deeply invested in maintaining the perfect storyline where the central character or characters are our children. Like me, you may come to the stunning realisation that the script that you have meticulously created is not so accurate, after all.

As my adult daughter heads back to work in London in January, I remind myself that she may never live in Queensland again, let alone Toowoomba, and the narrative I’d composed so carefully, the one where she might pop in for dinner on Sunday nights, is merely folly, fiction in the author’s mind.

Writer, Rachel Cusk warns us not to become too attached to that perfect script because, after all, ‘at some point the growing child will pick up [the script] and turn it over in [her] hands like some dispassionate reviewer composing a cold-hearted analysis of an overhyped novel. The shock of critique is the first, faint sign of the coming conflict, though I wonder how much of what we call conflict is in fact our own deserved punishment for telling the story wrong, for twisting it with our own vanity or wishful thinking, for failing to honour the truth.’

She paints a harsh but very truthful reality for those of us who hold too tightly to a treasured storyline. After all, letting go of our children is an art form (Brown, 2020) and yet it is the essence of adolescence – the period of time taken for a teen to define themselves as separate from their parents: not as a clone, not as a mini-version of said parents and certainly not as the protagonist of their parents’ script.

I think of this period of parenting as analogous to standing on the sideline watching our daughter play sport or sitting in an audience watching her perform on stage.

Do we find ourselves wanting to be on the field or stage with her, metaphorically or literally? Do we see her as emulating us? Are we wanting to correct adjudicators and umpires too vociferously? Do we analyse each moment of the performance on the car trip home – commenting, deconstructing critically, comparing to others? If we are honest, we’ve all done some of that in some way – but hopefully not all of it, all the time.

Letting go is the ultimate art form. No one does it easily, though it is possible to do it with grace. Given that statistics from the Royal Melbourne Hospital tell us that the period of adolescence begins at age 10 and that the average adolescence/adult in Melbourne leaves home at 27, there is a long period of time for us to perfect the skill of letting go, and lots of opportunity to do so with grace – if that is our will. Implicit in that grace lies humility and a willingness to manage our own shame when things don’t go to script.

Hodson (2020) writes that ‘all parents “fail” in some sense. A noted [psychologist] once[said]: ‘A parent’s place is in the wrong.’ That statement is not something for us to view as dire. It’s there as a reality check for us all, that pertinent reminder that our best intentions go hand in hand with our own flaws and ‘humanness’ – and sometimes it is a volatile mix. Whilst we all have a depth of life experience, we have worked, travelled, and faced challenging circumstances - these are our experiences, and they are not our child’s (Brown, 2020). Whilst our wisdom is valuable, how and when it is shared, matters. Sometimes we cannot share it at all.

Hold on for the ride and let go gracefully as you do so … enjoy the moments of unity when you escape with her, from what can sometimes be the ‘mild prison of home’ (Cusk, 2015), the place where hopes, expectations and the thirst for independence can meet in a volatile collision. She is coming back … eventually, but now is the time for her to explore, to find herself as independent from her parents, and to do so, with the security of knowing that home is also a place of comfort, certainty and love.

‘For as long as you cling to your children like a lifebelt, you will cease to grow up.’ (Hodson, 2020) – and neither will they. She is coming back … even from London, (eventually)!

Dr Linda Evans | Principal

References:

Brown, M. (2020). The Art of Letting Your Children Go »

Retrieved 4 August 2022

Cusk, R. (2015). Teenagers: what’s wrong with them? ‘The Australian’. April 25, 2015

Hodson, P. (2012). My message to the parents who can’t let their children go: grow up »

‘The Guardian’. 5 August 2012.

Retrieved 4 August 2022

Pondering Resilience In Blackall

16 June 2022

Tuesday 7 June 2022, it is cold: Toowoomba-esque winter-cold, and I am standing at the Showgrounds in Blackall, waiting to speak to the topic of resilience, as part of a panel. It is the 51st ICPA (Isolated Children’s Parent’s Association) Conference, and I am conscious that I am about to speak to a group of boarder parents, past boarder parents from country towns, properties, and communities - those who live and love bush life, those for whom the practice of resilience is a feature of daily life. These are people who depend directly on the nuances of seasons and weathers, they know intimately, what it means to manage disappointment and reframe frustrations: impostor syndrome lurks within me – what can I offer to this conversation? Standing beside me, is Fairholme parent, Joy McClymont – pocket dynamo and founder of ‘Off the track training’ – she is a walking advertisement for resilience, perseverance, and grit. There’s Linda Hansen, Chief Operating Officer at Outback Futures, Kevin Hillebrand, a Mental Health Social Worker with the Royal Flying Doctors Service, and Dr Toby Ford, CEO Ford Health – as facilitator. I am in exceptional company.

Toby challenged the way we define resilience, or certainly the way we sometimes view it. He reminded us, that inherent in the term, is the notion of flexibility, elasticity, adaptability. Yet, we often tie resilience to stoicism, don’t we – the ability to continue with impressive persistence, despite adversity. This is OK, he noted, provided we are not doggedly stoic. It’s flexible adaptability he advocates as pure resilience, it is the behaviour we have witnessed abundantly in this season of coronavirus, where the need for change, pivoting behaviour, and flexibility has been demanded of us, more often than at any other time in recent history. Yet dogged stoicism, the ‘but we’ve always done it this way’ mindset often loiters in our DNA. Toby views this intractable worldview as a danger to our health.

Enter media personality Seamus Evans (of ‘Totally Wild’ fame) who also addressed the ICPA Conference a few days later, as ambassador for the Tourette Syndrome Association Australia. The crux of his message was about the value of flexible adaptability in the face of adversity. Humorously and also poignantly, Seamus shared his own story of managing neurodiversity through his life and particularly throughout his adolescent and young adult life, where he courageously turned this perceived flaw into his superpower. His mantra, in the most difficult of circumstances, has been - just one more step. Keep going. Do not give up. Eat that elephant one bite a time … His presentation was a reminder that another important factor in achieving successful resilience is to know our destination. Seamus asked, what’s the point in bouncing back, if we don’t know where we are headed.

Yes, it may seem that resilience is an over-used, hackneyed term, or one that has been given too much media focus. Yet, as a skill, its value sits high above an ATAR, a swathe of certificates or success on the sporting field. To be resilient is a back pocket card that may or may not need to be played regularly throughout one’s life, but it will need to be played – it will. Of course, the way we learn resilience comes from many sources – including our first and most important teachers: our parents. “A parent’s resilience serves as a template for a child to see how to deal with challenges, how to understand their own emotions,” (Siegel cited in Popek, 2018). How do we, as adults, demonstrate resilience in our own daily living? Importantly, how do we respond when our children struggle to self-regulate when faced with adversity or difficulty? 

I once listened to Sports Psychologist, Dr Joann Lukins, share an occasion where a team she was mentoring, lost an important match, in the dying seconds. What did she say to them, what were her magic words, the audience wondered? “I said nothing,” she told us. In her view, at that moment, there was simply nothing to say that would be helpful. Perspective comes with time, but not two minutes after disappointment. We need time and the dignity of space in order to digest disappointment; if we are resilient, we will bounce back. There is no gene for resilience, therefore, in the nature versus nurture debate, it’s all about nurture. Thus, in not wanting to steal our children’s need to confront and negotiate disappointment, Lukins’ advice is noteworthy. Give space. Give time. Don’t over-talk. Model self-regulation and hence the first step towards responsive resilience.

Whilst “one of the great skills of parenting is knowing how to challenge, when to challenge, how much to challenge” (Masten, cited in Vance, 2021), we do know that resilience is best developed when we allow our children to flounder, fall, adapt, and rebound. We do know that our own example is the most powerful tool in either nurturing or curtailing its development. Our children’s resilience is not best represented in posters about mountain climbing or firefighting. It is best evidenced in small ways that cumulatively build a flexible adaptive worldview and allow them to recover from hurt, pain and disappointment without our intervention or over-soothing behaviours. The back pocket card of resilience needs to be available to be played, because it will need to be played, for some – if we consider Seamus Evans, on a daily basis. Ultimately, the ideal would be that our children (and us) have the skills to reimagine our flaws as superpowers. 

Just one more step. Keep going. Do not give up. Eat that elephant one bite a time…

Dr Linda Evans | Principal

References:

Popek, E. (2018). ‘To Raise Resilient Kids, Be a Resilient Parent.’ The New York Times. March 28, 2018. Retrieved 12 June 2022

Vance, E. (2022). ‘The Secret to Raising a Resilient Kid.’ The New York Times. Sept. 14, 2021. Retrieved 12 June 2022

Abled Or Enabled?

30 May 2022

‘In the therapeutic world, an enabler is someone who habitually allows a family member or close friend to make choices that can result in harm.’ (Kirby, 2022)

Recently, I sat and listened to Australian of the Year, Dylan Alcott, share a little of his life narrative. As always, I am entranced by someone else’s story, particularly when it challenges me to think differently about my own perceptions. The following day, I began reading one of my Mother’s Day gifts: ‘Atlas of the Heart’ by Brene Brown. Alcott and Brown are textually different, but their threads share a similar quality when we ponder the ways in which parenting can enable or ‘able’ our children. Brown recounts her own complex childhood where uncertainty about parental reaction and response left her hypervigilant. By default, her parents abled her survival and resilience capabilities, but the process left her acutely anxious. Alcott, conversely, was parented to be able, despite a disability. It’s all about the ‘en’, or its absence.

One of Alcott’s opening stories was of childhood, sharing Saturday morning television with his brother, Zack. Whomever held the television remote had the power: a scenario with which we can all identify. Zack learned quickly that if he needed to go to the bathroom during a television binge, then he needed to take the remote control with him. He knew, that by placing it on top of the fridge, it was safe from Dylan’s grasp. At this point in the story telling, Dylan turned to the audience and asked: was this a good thing or a bad thing? Hands shot up – there was disparate mumbling – some were saying yes, others definitively no. He asked an audience member was it good or bad? The answer – ‘it was good because your brother treated you as an equal.’ Alcott agreed – ‘it was good because it would have been so easy for my parents to give me everything, to erase any struggle, to smooth my way. To make Zack give me the television remote, every time. But they didn’t – and for that I am so grateful.’ Their actions led to Alcott’s abled view of the world.

I love this example – it speaks eloquently to me as a parent, it questions the line between enabling and ‘abling’ and the destructive influence of the ‘en’. Because I too am guilty of lapses of smoothing the way for my children – of metaphorically handing them the television remote when they seek it out. Inadvertently, disabling, disempowering, and immobilising. Too easily, we forget that it is in struggle that we find both ourselves and our determination to do things differently. It is in the deep pit of struggle that we plot our means of escape, we solve problems, and we ‘able’ ourselves to become our own person. Parents instinctively want to protect their child, to advocate their position and to rescue them from disappointment. Too often, in the interests of peace and family harmony, misguided kindness – or self-preservation, we find ourselves providing instant gratification to our children (Kirby, 2022) – irrespective of their age. 

Psychologists have long recognised that distress often promotes maturation. We grow from feeling the sting of a mistake. We learn from losing, missing out and waiting our turn. Weathering setbacks, with support from the people who love us, helps us learn to manage disappointment. Psychologist, Holly Schfiffin writes in the Journal of Child and Family Studiesthat parents who over-help, who enable their children a life without stress, steal their children’s ability to make decisions and thus ensure that their children are ill-prepared for life as adults. Autonomy has profound benefit for kids of all ages. Studies link autonomy to long-term motivation, independence, confidence, and better executive function. As a child gets older, autonomy is associated with better performance in school and a decreased risk of drug and alcohol abuse. ‘Like exercise and sleep, it is good for virtually everything,’ neuropsychologist William Stixrud and educator Ned Johnson write in their book The Self-Driven Child.

The fundamental paradox of parenting, though, is that we are responsible for our children and yet we cannot possibly be responsible for them. A wise practitioner puts it this way: ‘children are clay in your hands, and they are also the rocks that break your hands.’ Our role is to allow our children to also mould the clay, to endure the breakages, and to learn that for every action, there is a consequence and an opportunity to learn. Let us not cause harm as enablers, even when we have the noblest of intention – let our children be able – able to manage the tv remote battle for themselves.

References:

Castelino, L. (2016). Behind Every Entitled Kid Is an Enabling Parent » ‘The Huffington Post’ Retrieved 15 May 2022.

Damour, L. (2019). Drawing the Line Between Helping and Helicoptering » ‘The New York Times’ Retrieved 15 May 2022 .

Doucleff, M. (2022). A 4-year-old can run errands alone… and not just on reality TV. Goats and Soda: stories of life in a changing world » Retrieved 15 May 2022.

Heath, C. (1999). ‘On the Social Psychology of Agency Relationships: Lay Theories of Motivation Overemphasize Extrinsic Incentives’ Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes Vol. 78, No. 1, April, pp. 25–62, 1999.

Kirby, S. (2022). How to Stop Enabling Grown Children and Why It’s Important » Retrieved 15 May 2022.

Winter, J. (2022). The Harsh Realm of Gentle Parenting »  ‘The New Yorker’ March 23. 2022. Retrieved 15 May 202.

Stage Exit

28 March 2022

And just like that Ash Barty has left the court, left the match, and left us feeling a little bereft.

Selfishly, we imagined that Ash would be with us for years: a name, a face, an Aussie to revere. We were looking forward to her next tennis conquest, to watching the unique repertoire of skills in her armory and delighting in the coolness of her persona under pressure. Right now, it feels a little like a movie that ends abruptly - not remotely in the way we imagined or hoped. Yes, perhaps we feel that ‘the happily ever after ending’ has been snatched from our grasp in an untimely way; the script has been rewritten in the most unconventional manner.

Yes, she’s done it again. Ash Barty has failed to follow the formula for an athlete at her prime. She has chosen family connection over dizzy success (and grueling training and travel regimes) and we feel both admiration for her courage and sadness for our own unanticipated loss. Here is the most delightful example of someone who has life perspective, here is her trademark timing projected into another space, and here is a lesson for us all: you don’t have to follow expectation. Your children won’t always follow your expectations, either.

A number of years ago I fielded a call from my cousin – a neurological physician who, along with his wife – also a medical specialist, were lamenting their eldest daughter’s choice of senior subjects. She had not chosen the same subjects that they had studied at school, the subjects that they had loved and the ones that had placed them both on a trajectory to study medicine. I was bemused. Perhaps as a teacher I had seen this scenario play out repeatedly, or perhaps I was surprised that my cleverest of cousins had failed to predict an outcome, possibly for the first time in his life. And yet his daughter has thrived in her field of law and I doubt that she has ever looked back and wondered about those subject choices that caused her dad so much angst.

We don’t have to follow the path that’s been written for us – either explicitly or implicitly. Therein is a bittersweet lesson for us as parents. It takes such courage to pursue the road less travelled, doesn’t it. Yet Ash Barty makes her stage exit look like it is the natural outcome. After all, she’s done it before. She had a tennis sabbatical for nearly two years when she chose cricket over tennis because the grind of a sport, she excels at, had overwritten her wellbeing and sense of purpose. There are salutatory lessons for us all in her exit from centre stage. The grass on the court of success is not as green as it appears from the sideline. Winning at the highest of levels is a commitment that is not necessarily sustainable, certainly without significant compromise. Leaving that which you love takes courage.

Sport teaches us so much about life and Ash Barty has transported those lessons to another level. She has stopped us metaphorically in our armchairs as we sat yearning another tournament win, vicariously, of course. As magnificently as she entered, she has exited a champion. She takes with her so much more than monetary wealth. Ash Barty has exerted the power of choice and demonstrated the courage to resist expectation and the will to determine the next scene in the script. May we as parents, be as gracious when our own children step at right angles from the path we anticipated, built, and formulated – consciously or unconsciously. Their departures won’t always be from the pinnacle of success and they may cause us, in the shock that the unexpected brings, a need to regroup and reimagine the future. Therein lies our need for courage.

How do we best support a stage exit?

This One Thing I Do

23 March 2022

This One Thing I Do… (Philippians 3:13 KJV)

In his book, One BIG Thing, author Phil Cooke examines the proposition that we are all born for a purpose (not a mind-blowing thought, I know) but discovering that purpose and our passion can be a lifelong pursuit. Cook asks this question: ‘What could you be the best in the world at doing?’ It’s a question that young children would probably answer without equivocation but it’s a question that seems to become more difficult to answer as we age, as we come to expect too much or too little of ourselves. We don’t have to be the best at anything, of course, far better to do our best, but I love the question, anyway. It’s a big question. I think, as parents of emerging adults it deserves careful attention. But how do we probe our children towards seeking purpose?

‘All big things come from small beginnings,’ says James Clear, author of Atomic Habits. He would say that the seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. Of course, habits, beneficial habits, are the actions that lead us towards our goals. If we dig deep into the recesses of our own childhood, most of us could select a moment or moments that were pivotal in directing our course … perhaps our course towards the one BIG thing we have achieved.

Sometimes those moments appear accidental, unaligned with the future, but become significant in the clarity of retrospect. It is why the words we choose matter so much. The casual remark of a parent, the carefully crafted feedback offered by a teacher, or a piece of reinforcement by a coach or a music teacher can be a turning point, a direction-setter. Words have weight – we must be careful how we use them.

Working in a school allows us to witness the evolution of many students ‘one big thing’, or to hear of success long after they have left the tartan behind. So often the puzzle pieces segue together – and when we hear of a girl’s career choice, her service to her community, or sporting success, or musical accolade we nod in unison and make comments like – ‘that makes sense’ or ‘of course she has.’ Often, we see the future with a greater sense of clarity than the student themselves.

Thus, the question begs, what is the role for parents in supporting our children to find their passion? Your role is huge, of course. You are and remain your child’s greatest teacher. From you they learn consciously and unconsciously about risk-taking, determination, perseverance and those underpinning skills that make big things, or valuable achievements more likely to occur. They learn habits from you. Habits are the base for who we become, rather than what we achieve. ‘The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity’ (Clear, 2018). Yet, Clear reminds that ‘the task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us [whilst] the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower, one day at a time.’

Building new habits often involves confronting our own fear of change, or perhaps fear of failure. In writing of questions that parents can ask their children when prompting them to address fear of new challenges, Paul Smith (2014) suggests these:

• Name something you’d like to do now but have been scared to try. How can I help you with that?
• Can you think of something some people are just naturally good at without having to learn and practice?
• How long do you think it takes people to get good at something new, like learning an instrument or playing a new sport?
• Is there anything that used to be difficult or a little scary for you that’s now much easier?

These are great questions. They do leave our default interrogations behind, you know, those quick statements that fall from our mouths before our thinking brain has caught up:

• Why don’t you just have a go?
• Everyone else out there is trying, why don’t you?
• Surely it can’t be that hard…

Finding purpose and strength rarely occurs as an epiphany, it emerges in pieces that need to be drawn together. Yes, we are all born for a purpose. For some, that purpose appears with greater clarity than for others. Often it is elusive, out of reach or invisible and that’s because we often tie our purpose to Cooke’s (2012) ‘One BIG Thing’ and default to seeking the extrinsic rather than the intrinsic and believe in the need to achieve something unique.

What if our one BIG thing is something less conspicuous and relates more specifically to who we become rather than what we achieve? What if it begins instead with the establishment of good habits, which, in the much-oft quoted words of philosopher Lao Tzu, will become our character, and thus determine our destiny.

‘Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.’

Let us choose the words we use with our children carefully, for words have weight and impact and matter a great deal. After all, ‘all big things come from small beginnings.’ May this [the choosing of words] be the one thing I do … and do, well.

References:

Clear, J. (2018). ‘Atomic habits: tiny changes, remarkable results : an easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones.’ New York : Avery.

Smith, P. (2015). ‘ Parenting with a Story: real-life lessons in character for parents and children to share.’ AMACOM, New York, USA.

Beginning The First Quarter

22 February 2022

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”  Abraham Lincoln

The first quarter at Fairholme has begun – Term One, special, unique and entirely different from any term that has come before. We began with remote learning and a hybrid model of staff professional learning prior to that. It’s interesting the way that we begin, isn’t it? Meticulously planned or chaotically random – we all sit somewhere on that continuum. Some of us thirst for order whilst others thrive on the newness of things. Yet, it’s hard to imagine any accomplished musician or athlete entering their performance arena without the gift of an eternity of practice and a clear game plan. Their metaphoric first quarter would follow a path of intention and be bolstered by a commitment to perform at their best. Is that how we begin our school year, our first quarter – with intention and commitment to do our best?

Listening to Australia’s winter Olympic gold medalist Jakara Anthony speak, was a reminder of the value of preparation and the possession of a clear game plan. When asked what seemed a fatuous question, ‘When you finished fourth at the Olympics in Pyeongchang, did you start talking about what you needed to do differently to reach a podium finish?’ It was unsurprising that she answered, ‘Of course.’ But she also said that she was happy with that fourth, not tortured in the way we might predict. She said something to the effect of, ‘that was my personal best at the time, and I skied at my best at that time. I have no disappointment whatsoever that I came fourth there, I couldn't have asked any more of myself at the time.’

There’s something refreshingly ‘Ash Bartyesque’ in her ability to enjoy the moment, to step away from public opinion and audience scrutiny, and revel in the moment, to fully immerse in the sport she loves. Impressively, this is how she described the thirty seconds that led to her gold medal finish. ‘In that 30 seconds [of that run], I couldn't hear the crowd. I felt no pressure, I wasn't thinking about the competition. I was just in the moment loving mogul skiing just like I did as a kid. Some people call that the flow. I am in search of that every day.’ What a gift: in an Olympic final there was the absence of pressure and the invisibility of spectators. Imagine if students could step into an exam room seeking flow, enjoying the moment and without the feeling of pressure. Imagine.

And imagine if students learned for the joy of learning. Jakara says that ‘winning’ her first Olympic competition was not about a medal, or a podium finish, and that ‘medals are great, but they aren’t what drive me.’ Yet she is driven. She is driven in the pursuit of excellence. She is driven to practice, prepare, and then practice some more in the quest for ‘flow’, the ability to be in the moment with her sport. Jakara had been preparing for this golden moment for almost her whole life, from the time she donned her first skis at the age of four. If we knew more of her story we would invariably know about hard, hard work, setbacks, disappointments and a steely determination to perfect the ‘imperfectable’. Nothing worthwhile ever happens without effort.

I wonder what thoughts were in her mind when she stood at the top of the snowy mogul run and readied herself to begin. Perhaps her head was clear, unfettered by pressure and full of the view in front of her … perhaps. That’s because she had begun planning and preparation long before that moment. Her ‘axe was sharpened’ and she was ready to attack the slopes. Could we say the same about the way in which we have begun our first quarter at Fairholme in 2022? I have done some reading on first quarters (of course) – research has found that those that win the first quarter are more likely to be the winner at the final whistle. It seems a self-evident truth, doesn’t it?

Beginning matters, but the preparation that occurs before we begin, matters even more. Can we say that we are as prepared as we can be to achieve our goals for the term? The essence of an effective first quarter will see these elements:

• Showing up, and showing up on time, prepared
• Goals set and goals shared with those we trust. 
• The establishment of small victories or milestones along the way – 
• A commitment to do the small things well. 

Let us view each term, each quarter as important. No athlete wins an important race without success in each quarter of that race. And, I suspect, that our most successful students - on any measure, are prepared, intentional, committed and self-aware enough to set milestones along the way. Let us begin, with axe sharpened for all that lies ahead.

References:

Hytner, M. (2022). Gold medal puts Jakara Anthony in exclusive Australian club after realising childhood Olympic dream › The Guardian. 7 February 2022.

McGarry, A & Smale, S. (2022). Jakara Anthony wins Australia's first gold at Beijing Winter Olympics with women's moguls victory › ABC News. 6 February. 2022

Round Hole. Square Peg.

16 February 2022

It would seem that living in, and not on the edge of a pandemic is a square peg existence. We yearn for purist 2019 smooth round-hole living, and we can’t have it. We want to abandon masks, sit too close beside friends and loved ones, and we want to travel as we used to – anywhere, anytime, without restriction. We don’t want to use RATs or PCRs or be holed up in isolation for seven days.

It’s a little like parenting at times, isn’t it – we want to drive that square peg into the smooth round hole and wonder why there’s resistance. We want our children to be a reflection of the best of us, or the best of who we have dreamed them to be, and, instead, they are themselves. Beautifully themselves. Along with our young adult children, we often muse at the square peg attempts of my husband and me, to create them into people other than themselves. There were ballet lessons for seven years and Speech and Drama lessons for at least as long, all this for a girl who wanted to surf, play every team sport on offer, and ride her push bike at top speed around a velodrome. And there were trumpet lessons for a boy who had the musicality of his mother, and tennis lessons when he would rather have been playing cricket or reading voraciously. 

There is, of course, that subtle difference between encouraging our children to test out new limits and unashamed persistence at driving this uniquely shaped child into a different shape, someone’s else’s shape or a perfect shape we have imagined since before their birth. A poignantly penned text entitled ‘Welcome to Holland’ is the story of a mother, Perl Kingsley, whose child was born with unexpected complexities. She describes her pregnancy as akin to planning a trip to Italy but finding yourself in Holland when the baby arrives. Yet, she adds, at the end of the piece, her greatest wisdom - ‘But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to go to Italy, you will never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.’

2022 looms a little like that for us all. We want school to be exactly the same. We want all the things that happen in a school year to be unchanged. Exactly as we have imagined them – for many this imagining has been for a lifetime. But things are not as they have always been – not for us at Fairholme, and not for any other child at any school in the world, it would seem. Things have shifted. Things are not as they always have been. They’re not. All the wishing in the world will not direct our flightpath that is unerringly destined for Holland, back to where we imagine we should be – in Italy. 

And thus, we inhale, we pray for strength and perspective, and look for the great things that are held in the palm of 2022. Let us not spend this year mourning for what might have been or should have been, rather, let’s enjoy the special, very lovely things about the year ahead. Let’s stop forcing a square peg into a round hole.

Reference:

‘Welcome to Holland’

2022 Welcome

18 January 2022

‘No matter how attentively we have prepared for this moment, it can also feel that nothing has prepared us for this moment…’

Welcome to 2022 - a new school year on the brink of commencing, but not in the way we imagined.

We enter our third year negotiating pandemic living. Having skirted its full force for the past two years, we are confronting its reality in new ways. We can expect change, adaptation, cancellations – and thus, there is a deep need for flexibility, adaptability, and acceptance that things are not as they used to be: they are not. Despite this, there is much to look forward to in the year ahead. 

Beginning always has its challenges, doesn’t it? Be it for current or new students dealing with a situation not anticipated, the wrench of leaving an established pattern of life including the freedoms of holidays, yes, beginning can be fraught.

We find ourselves in a heightened state of excitement or anxiety – or perhaps both, after all, the physiological response is the same, irrespective of how we brand the feeling, the branding does matter. Excitement and anticipation are much more palatable sensations than fear or anxiety.

To our brand-new starters… 

When our children start school or boarding school for the first time, it’s at the top of the change scale.

No matter how attentively we have prepared for this moment, it can also feel that nothing has prepared us for this moment.

Add a disrupted beginning and it really is OK as a parent to feel even more unsettled than our child! So, what to do to allay that feeling?

• Talk to other parents – particularly pertinent for our new boarder parents
• Talk about school and the things you know, the things to look forward to, and the things that might need some adjustment, don’t fixate on the hard stuff, but don’t avoid it entirely, either
• Be positive about the change and get involved in the practicalities of getting ready – even though the mode of beginning has been altered and delayed
• Respond to questions and assure that together you will find out the answers
• Remind your children that whenever they can, to move off the metaphoric sideline – yes, even when learning remotely and online, and, to ask for help if needed. The phrase ‘fake it ‘til you’ll make it’ has relevance to everyone beginning again. For all parents, the fundamental ‘do’ is to speak in the positive – even about the difficult ‘stuff’.

Boarding remains the front of mind consideration for many. We continue to seek information and direction; I am hopeful that the National Cabinet meeting set for tomorrow might provide a path forward.

Maintaining a symptom-free environment within a school and particularly in a boarding community is complex. We continue to grapple with quarantine requirements, testing procedures and isolation processes. Fairholme family support and understanding remains so important. Further, if day families have connections with boarding families, and can assist in some way, please be in touch with them.

We had exceptional support from our day families in 2020 when numbers permitted in boarding were restricted and this enabled many of our boarders to resume face-to-face schooling as day students.

This is the time for our College to work as a community. Be assured that any changes that may need to occur because of the requirements of COVID-19 management will be communicated with as much notice as is possible - we will let you know, as we know!

Let us look forward to a promising and enriching 2022, despite our unanticipated beginning and the challenges we collectively face.

Thank you for your understanding and flexibility – it is always appreciated.

Kind regards,

Dr Linda Evans | Principal