What I've learned about parenting from running

Learning from Stephen Grosz's 'The Examined Life'

In last week’s Friday thread discussion, a reader shared this question:

“I've been thinking/writing about ways to apply the wisdoms of running to parenting. But I would love to hear from other folks — what lessons have you learned from running that you use as a parent?”

When I first read it, I had the sense that this was something worth digging into, but I wasn’t quite sure how to answer. Surely there are some things I can take from running and apply to parenting, I know, but I just couldn’t put my finger on exactly what they are.

Maybe that’s because for me, even after a decade of being both a step-parent and a biological parent (at the same time), I have a hard time coming up with any hard-and-fast rules anymore about… anything. I’m not sure I feel qualified to give anyone advice, let alone on parenting, because every child, every family and every home situation is so unique.

As a kid, I wasn’t much of an athlete, and my parents didn’t push sports on me. So, I don’t know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of parenting that encourages a lot of athleticism, or tries to impart athletic values.

I don’t have many memories of hitting the big home run, or scoring the big goal in soccer, to win the game. I do have memories of playing in the dandelions in tee-ball, and hanging out in right field waiting for the (very rare) errant fly ball to come my way.

There is so much I know I’ve learned from running — not so much lessons I apply, but more an overall approach to life. So with that said, let me imagine what I’d say to my kids if they asked the question, “Why do you spend so much time running? What is it you get from being out there?”

Here goes…

I’ve learned that if you want to get better at something, you can’t rely on how you feel to motivate you. I ran this morning and Monday, and on neither day did I feel like going. Even when I was about a mile into each run, I still didn’t feel like being there, and the devil on my shoulder was doing his best to persuade me to stop.

But, I still got out there and ran each day. Because I’m an adult now (after all these years!) and now I know that if I only do this when I feel like it, I’m not going to make much progress toward where I want to be.

This is so hard for a kid to accept. I see it in my 9-year-old, when I try to get him to practice his piano/soccer/math/etc. When he doesn’t want to, trying to get him to practice is like trying to convince someone to eat ground glass. (Whenever I badger him, I remember what it was like to be nine. I think to myself, “I feel you, I really do… but we’ve gotta do this.”)

Those feelings are part of the resistance we all experience when we attempt things like running long distances. At some point, your body is emphatically not going to want to go for a training run you know you need. (In the same way nine women can’t have a baby in one month, you can’t be ready for a marathon in a week or two.)

It’s worth it to dream big, even if no one notices. My kids are growing up in a time when they can watch people achieve the most amazing feats imaginable just by tapping open an app. They can see their classmates’ lives unfolding a photo/video at a time, on a near-daily basis. It’s become routine for teenagers, especially, to be “on,” to give the world a performance each day in a way only celebrities did when I was young.

What I wonder is, what is happening in their minds as they see all this scroll by? Are they inspired by what they see, and does it motivate them to go after their own desires and dreams? Or, is the pull of social media so great that all of life gets lived for it — for the affirmation that comes from all the likes and engagement social media can deliver?

None of us ever completely escapes the comparison trap. We all feel it, to a greater or lesser degree. But running has taught me there are things in our lives we can (and should) keep for ourselves alone — experiences, memories, and thoughts that are ours, and don’t need to be subjected to the world’s scrutiny.

By the same token, we should of course follow our hearts when it comes to our dreams in life — whether that’s the person we love, or the thing we love to do. But we should take care to be sure our dreams really are our dreams, and not ones we’ve absorbed by osmosis from the world around us.

Running gives us a way to be with friends that’s special and unique. Most of my runs now are solo runs, but for years I had a running group I met up with every Saturday morning. There was something about running alongside one another, all of us facing the same direction and yet connecting with each other, that I still look back on with affection.

We shared everything going on in our lives with each other — relationships, jobs, family, what we were watching on TV, what we were reading. What I loved about it was that we were unpretentiously ourselves with each other. There are so many other social areas of life that can get competitive, but ironically it was while we participated in a competitive activity that we were the most open and vulnerable with one another.

Why is that? I’m not sure, to be honest. There’s an idea I stumbled across recently in a wonderful book by Stephen Grosz, called The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves. It has a chapter called “How praise can cause a loss of confidence,” which tells the story of how we as a society arrived at the ideas we hold today about talking to children, specifically when it comes to praising them.

The idea behind praise, of course, is to let a child know that we see them, and to encourage them. But that’s not the effect praise often has, it turns out; children who are praised for the result of a task they complete or a goal they achieve, rather than the effort they put into achieving it, ultimately perform worse over time. The flash of recognition they feel for their cleverness subsides quickly, only to be replaced by anxiety that they can’t repeat it.

How does this relate to being with friends today, as an adult? The answer comes in a conversation Grosz had with Charlotte Stiglitz, the mother of famed economist (and Nobel Prize winner) Joseph Stiglitz, who taught remedial reading to students in Indiana for many years.

Her teaching experience taught her there’s something much more important than praise — especially empty praise, the kind we dole out with good intentions, but without thinking about the impact it will have.

As Grosz writes:

I once watched Charlotte with a four-year-old boy, who was drawing. When he stopped and looked up at her — perhaps expecting praise — she smiled and said, ‘There is a lot of blue in your picture.’ He replied, ‘It’s the pond near my grandmother’s house — there is a bridge.’ He picked up a brown crayon, and said, ‘I’ll show you.’ Unhurried, she talked to the child, but more importantly she observed, she listened. She was present.

Being present builds a child’s confidence because it lets the child know that she is worth thinking about. Without this, a child might come to believe that her activity is just a means to gain praise, rather than an end in itself. How can we expect a child to be attentive, if we’ve not been attentive to her?

Being present, whether with children, with friends, or even with oneself, is always hard work. But isn’t this attentiveness — the feeling that someone is trying to think about us — something we want more than praise?

That attentiveness, that being present, is nourishing in a way no amount of praise ever can be. That feeling of being seen, being truly seen and valued by another, is the kind of connection we’d all love to have in all our relationships.

What I experienced in my running group, on all those sweaty, humid Saturday mornings, was that feeling of being seen by each other — not judged, not dismissed, but the kind of conversation in which you can experience real connection.

That’s what I hope my children get to experience an abundance of in life — the chance to chase their dreams, and the joy (and fun) of healthy, connected relationships. Because when you have that, you kinda have everything.

What do you think? What are the things you’ve learned about being a parent from being a runner? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

As always, keep in touch and let me know how your running/life/etc. is going — have a great run out there tomorrow.

Your friend,

— Terrell

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Our training miles for the week

Photo by Adam Winger on Unsplash

This week, we reach new mileage peaks for each training group — on Saturday, those running the 12-week plan hit 11 miles, those running the 16-week plan run nine, and the 10-milers run eight miles. Good luck this weekend! Let me know if you have any questions. — Terrell

Here are the plans for the coming week:

12-week plan:

• Thursday, Oct. 27 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

• Saturday, Oct. 29 — 11 miles/110-115 minutes

• Sunday, Oct. 30 — 3 miles/30-35 minutes

• Tuesday, Nov. 1 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

• Wednesday, Nov. 2 — 6 miles/60-65 minutes

16-week plan:

• Thursday, Oct. 27 — 4-5 miles/40-55 minutes

• Saturday, Oct. 29 — 9 miles/90-95 minutes

• Sunday, Oct. 30 — 2-3 miles/20-35 minutes

• Tuesday, Nov. 1 — 5-6 miles/50-65 minutes

• Wednesday, Nov. 2 — off

10-mile training plan:

• Thursday, Oct. 27 — 4-5 miles/40-55 minutes

• Saturday, Oct. 29 — 8 miles/80-85 minutes

• Sunday, Oct. 30 — 4 miles/40-45 minutes

• Tuesday, Nov. 1 — 5 miles/50-55 minutes

• Wednesday, Nov. 2 — off