If doing it the first time always sucks, why not just get it out of the way as soon as possible?
That’s largely been our parenting philosophy for the past 4.5 years since my husband and I were thrust into parenting at the onset of the pandemic, back in April 2020.
If anyone out there is a parent, you probably know that raising kids is a lot like re-introducing all the things you loved before, but in a completely different context. Here are a few examples:
Like going out to eat? Now try the mode where you have a chaos muppet throwing everything on the ground every 4 seconds.
Like going out to fancy restaurants? Now tack on another $100 for the privilege of teaching someone else how to put your kids down for bed.
Like exploring new neighborhoods? Now try making friends with strangers on the subway when the elevators aren’t working and you need to carry the stroller up the stairs.
Like traveling internationally? Now try it with a sleep-deprived 9-month-old infant on your lap, or getting hand, foot, and mouth disease for the first time while 3,000 miles away!
I’m being intentionally hyperbolic here. I love my kids, and also, they make a lot of things a lot more difficult, at least initially.
One of the things we’ve learned is that, like a lot of things, it’s easier not to. It’s tempting to take the easy route: Eat in, stay home for bedtime, dodge the logistical nightmare of wrangling two kids on a bus across the city. But it’s also much, much less fun. And here’s the kicker—if you always choose what’s currently comfortable, you never build the resilience for all the new, crazy, amazing stuff that only shows up when you step outside your comfort zone.
For example, last spring, when we tagged along with my husband’s work trip to visit Australia and New Zealand for a month, I really wanted to visit this island off the coast of Auckland, New Zealand, called Tiritiri Matangi because they had some rare species of birds that today only live on that island.
But it was a nature hike situation, not a stroller-friendly environment. So I strapped my 9-month-old onto a front pack, and held my 3.5-year-old by the hand, and we boarded a one-hour boat for an all-day adventure alone on the island.
As soon as the other bird-watching aficionados saw the tiny humans aboard the boat, they realized we would likely be too erratic and loud to see any good birds, so they all fled to other tour guides. Instead, the three of us received a four-hour long, private walking tour of the island. We saw little penguins crawling in and out of tiny burrows. We saw giant New Zealand wood pigeons. We even saw takahes, the largest still-living member of the rail family of birds.
Today, my 4-year-old still sometimes tells me that she wants to go back to New Zealand to see a Takahe again. Good luck, babe...
Of course, resilience wasn’t just about hiking with toddlers. On that same trip, we had to emergency vacate a flood-ridden Airbnb and navigate a 12-hour flight delay that wreaked havoc on our family’s schedules. While this obviously wasn’t ideal, we did get to snap this incredible picture of our toddler lying face-down on the floor at baggage claim, completely asleep and totally unaware of the chaos and suitcases piling up around her.
What we didn’t realize was that the resilience we were building wasn’t in our kids—it was in us. It’s about learning to keep your cool when the third glass of water hits the restaurant floor. It’s the determination to step out the door for that dinner date, even when one kid is clinging to your leg, crying for you to stay. And it’s that growing muscle of embracing discomfort when your shirt’s dirtier than you'd like and your kid can’t seem to stop shouting, “Please poop away from the doors!” on the M5 bus heading uptown.
Embracing the Chaos of a Do-First Mentality
How you go about getting your at-bat’s in a personal choice. You can start with little experiments around the home, with increasing levels of discomfort. Or you can rip off the band-aid and dive headfirst into something entirely new.
In our family’s case, this do-first mentality started out of necessity. When our first baby arrived at the height of the pandemic, we literally had to scrap every part of our planned parental leave. We forfeited our summer vacation, family visits, and all those dreamy ideas of brunching with friends, hitting yoga classes, or passing a baby around the office. In that strange, locked-down world—without indoor dining, IRL offices, or live theatre—we realized if we wanted to hold onto the things we loved, we’d need to do the version that probably sucked a little at first, embrace the chaos, and figure it out in real time.
So in those early days, when bars reopened for outdoor drinks only, we strapped our baby into her carrier and headed to a neighborhood spot—standing outside with cocktails, just to make it work. We vetted a mask-wearing babysitter, already battle-tested by COVID, to give us a rare chance to enjoy a date night outside, which we walked all the way to midtown to enjoy. And when the opportunity came to leave everything behind and move to Australia for six months, we took it. The flight sucked. The two-week quarantine sucked. But then we lived internationally, COVID-free for six months, and our kid was able to meet other babies for the very first time.
One of the great things about building resilience is that it becomes a muscle you can apply to every aspect of life, with a ripple effect that impacts everything else. So go on—why not let your kid loose at your favorite Mexican restaurant tonight? What’s the worst thing that could happen?
