Building Capacity: You Can Do It!

I am not a morning person.

This might be an understatement.

I’m quite certain that all of my college papers were written between the hours of 11:00pm and 1:00am, and that I never really engaged meaningfully in class until after 9am and a few cups of coffee.  Many years later, and in spite of parenting a couple roosters/children, some things don’t change.  After a lazy summer schedule that didn’t beg the alarm to be set I have found the cooler, darker mornings of the structured school year to make it extra hard to get out of bed.  And so in an attempt to combat my reluctance I have started to set the coffee maker the night before, hoping the smell of a fresh pot of dark roast would lure me out of bed.

But my most genius plan yet was hatched just this week; I call it Operation: Breakfast.  With two young kids who are up at the crack of dawn, there are often shuffling feet beside my bed long before I’m ready to get up asking in way-too-alert voices, ‘Can you get me breakfast?’  [insert sigh, and maybe a groan, and a wish for a two hour nap to top off my too-short night of sleep].  

I can admit I am not always proud of how grumpy and rude I sound to two people I really love every morning…so now our nightly routine of teeth brushing, story reading, and bedtime snuggles also includes me taking their breakfast orders. 

Before bed I move the toaster to the edge of the counter, pull out butter knives, Nutella, and plastic plates, fill up cups and leave them waiting in the fridge, and pour dry cereal into plastic containers, being sure to leave our teeny tiny toy Tupperware jug filled with milk and slightly open, ready to pour.  

And now the mornings include two excited kids, tag teaming to help each other out while they get themselves breakfast.  

It is genius!  

Now my wake ups, while still early, aren’t filled with the same sense of urgency.  I listen to the coffee dripping into the pot alongside the sound of my children chatting over bagels and Froot Loops. 

It is a beautiful way to start the day.

But it’s not the extra sleep that leaves me so thrilled.  Ok.  So maybe it’s a little bit about the peace of waking up without demands.  

But what struck me this morning as I passed my oldest on the way to his room to get dressed, after he’d toasted and creamcheesed his own bagel before putting his dish in the sink, was how proud of themselves my kids were to be taking on some responsibility for themselves.  

My totally selfish decision to buy a few moments of unrushed calm in the morning not only altered the pace of my day, but inadvertently communicated some really important ideas to my kids.  Letting them show up for themselves and not needing to take charge sent them the message that, ‘I know you can handle this.  I trust you.’   

While it’s true that I have no idea how much creamcheese made it onto said bagel, it’s not really important.  And I’m confident that we’ll have a giant milk spill one of these days, but we’ll just clean it up.  This plan borne out of exhaustion has turned out to be a wonderful experiment in capacity building for my children, as I – after setting the stage – let them learn how to experiment with independence in a safe place.

As I pondered the idea of capacity building in my kids, I thought of the work I do with people on a regular basis.  Sometimes parents, even parents of adult kids, have held the reigns so tight that they have sent the message to their children that, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing…you need my help to make decisions.’  This creates adult children who are scared to death of making a choice, because they’re sure they’ll screw it up.  

Or some who hear from partners that, ‘You folded the towels wrong, I’ll just do it,’ sending the message that their partner is not clearly not capable to handle such a task. This leaves partners choosing to step away, rather than towards someone they love because their efforts never feel good enough.  

Sometimes friends feel the need to chime in on every outfit choice, haircut, or boyfriend in a way that undermines the ability of someone they love to feel confident in their preferences or instinctual decisions.  This leaves a person feeling insecure, and unsure if their ‘friends’ really accept them for who they are.

Now don’t get me wrong, sometimes as people who love people we need to hold up a mirror to poor choices that can have dicey consequences and with wrinkled foreheads say, ‘Really?’  That is part of being a good parent/partner/friend, too.  But I am not talking about the red flag moments…so much as the ordinary day-to-day stuff. 

I saw an acquaintance in Costco yesterday.  L was telling me about her uncertainty around a school related decision with one of her kids.  She told me point blank what she and her son wanted; they agreed.  But L stood there, hemming and hawing as she spoke – sharing how other people thought she should go another direction.  This was not a choice that involved sending her son to join the circus, sending him to boot camp, or endangering him in any way.  It was a choice where one option was not obviously better than the other, and where neither choice was poor.  And yet L couldn’t decide.  L could not access her own capacity to choose, for the encouragement (read: judgement) of others had drowned out her own voice.

I stood with L for a few moments, validating how hard it is to parent – and how we never quite feel like we’re making the right choice – and rolled off to the checkout encouraging her to trust herself.  That was my small effort to say, ‘Go Mom!  You’ve got this!’ 

And when my youngest asked me what to wear today I told her that was a decision she could definitely handle on her own, inviting an array of mix-matched disasters, but knowing that the act of choosing for herself was more important than any coordinating colors could ever be.

How do we build capacity into those around us?  

How do we love people in a way that says, ‘I believe in you.  Go for it!  You can make this decision, and I’ll support you,’ and not take over or try and take charge of their stuff?  

Don’t get me wrong, when capacity is inadvertently stripped, I am confident that a lot of the time it is done so with love, and a sincere desire by the other to help improve a situation.  But unfortunately ‘helping’ can send the message that, ‘You can’t take good enough care of yourself…let me do it for you.’ 

I, for one, will keep on taking those breakfast orders each night, and will enjoy the morning chatter between my two lovelies as they take care of each other (and themselves) while the sun is still dark and my coffee is dripping. 

I will resist the urge to reprimand when good efforts don’t produce phenomenal results, and instead celebrate the courage it took to try.  

I will step-the-heck-back out of situations that others can handle, and instead be the steady-on-the-side who cheers others on as they learn to show up and discover just how capable they really are. 

We all need a little more of this in our lives…people to cheer us on and tell us, ‘You can do it!’