Letter 130: Welcoming the Unexpected
When we reframe failure
Emily Fleming writes with such power and brilliance. Humor, decisiveness and direct vulnerability — I learn from every single letter she writes. Whether Emily shares about her work as a doctor, her experiences as a veteran or her belief about a woman’s right to choose, her voice is so important. Today’s letter is about Emily’s parenting philosophy and the importance of struggle. And as many of us know, it’s through struggle that we find our greatest nuggets of truth, resilience and growth. —Molly
“You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.”
—Paolo Coelho
Early in the summer I received a frantic call from my 10-year-old daughter. She and her 7-year-old brother were down at the street corner hosting a lemonade stand with some kids from the neighborhood, and she used her Gabb watch to tattle on her brother in a high tech manner. Fair enough, since my son had apparently thrown a rock and it hit a car that was driving by.
Deep breaths first, then ask the questions.
Did the driver stop? Yes. Did it crack the windshield? No one could definitively answer this. Ok. Well, send your brother home and I’ll deal with this.
This happened on our first official day of summer break. Incidentally, this was also day one of my mission to be an “80’s Parent.” As my kids have gotten older and more capable, I have found myself rejecting our modern model of helicopter parenting. I would likely find myself having uncomfortable conversations with police officers on a regular basis if I truly let my kids run amok with minimal supervision, like our parents did in the 80’s, but I am trying to allow them a bit more autonomy. Room to fail, if you will.
Mission accomplished.
My son was distraught and incredibly remorseful. It seemed the errant rock truly hit the car by accident, and while this whole thing could have been prevented with a bit more forethought, it was not an event born of malicious intent.
The ensuing conversation I had with my son turned out to be incredibly redemptive. We talked about how everyone makes mistakes, and how it’s part of your job as a kid to make mistakes while you’re young and more easily forgivable. He cried. We hugged.
And then two days later, he hit a golf ball off the porch and it dented the side of our neighbor’s old Toyota, so we did it all again.
My son has long struggled with perfectionistic tendencies, and has very high expectations of himself. As his parents are both high achieving physicians, we scratch our heads at where he might have inherited this trait [sarcasm].
We have shifted the way we talk about effort and success as a result of watching our children have incredibly detrimental responses to the habitual ways we were talking about ourselves. As a result, one of our family’s foundational tenets has become that we reject the idea of perfectionism and celebrate progress in all its forms.
Not too long ago, we began incorporating the discussion of our failures into our dinner conversation. This began as a result of my reading about Sara Blakely’s father practicing a similar exercise. Sara is an incredibly successful and brilliant businesswoman, and serves as founder and sole owner of Spanx, a billion dollar corporation.
She recounts that, “Growing up, he would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn’t have something, he would be disappointed. It changed my mindset at an early age that failure is not the outcome, failure is not trying. Don’t be afraid to fail.”
Also shaping my parenting philosophies of late is a book titled “The Anxious Generation.” The author, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, recommends four reforms in the way we allow our children to experience the world:
No smartphones before high school.
No social media before 16.
Phone-free schools.
Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence.
You may have seen these ideas floating around social media, as I have. I’m still reading the book, but I’m also drinking the kool-aid. These ideas really resonate with me and jive well with the kind of environment I am trying to create for my kids.
Somewhere along the way—ironically, circa the 1980’s—our societal views on the general safety of our external environment shifted. The world became perceived as a much more dangerous place, and parents were viewed as delinquent and irresponsible for allowing their children to roam unsupervised. But in truth, it is unsupervised play that teaches kids how to handle risks and challenges independently, building their confidence and inoculating them against anxiety.
I love the idea that I might be able to actually DO something to help prevent my children from developing anxiety. Turns out, I just need to get out of the way. Do less, if you will.
There is a fascinating description of “stress wood” in Haidt’s book. He talks about an experiment that was performed in the 1980s (again with the 80s!) in Arizona, where there was an attempt to build a closed artificial ecosystem that was self sustaining. The trees that were planted within this Biosphere fell over before reaching maturity, because the researchers designing the system did not realize that trees needed wind to grow properly, “When the wind blows, it bends the tree, which tugs at the roots on the windward side and compresses the wood on the other side. In response, the root system expands to provide a firmer anchor where it is needed, and the compressed wood cells change their structure to become stronger and firmer.”
I love that this beautiful analogy exists in the natural world. It resonates deeply with what I feel my children need in order to grow and thrive and develop into the strong and secure adults I am trying to help them become.
This summer felt full of promise as my children are reaching ages where I can allow them to explore our small town with a little more independence. Like Smalls’ mom in The Sandlot, I’m imploring my children to “get out into the fresh air and make some friends. Run around, scrape your knees, get dirty. Climb trees, hop fences. Get into trouble, for crying out loud. Not too much, but some. You have my permission.”
If I end up having to pay for a stranger’s cracked car windshield, it’ll feel worth it. Any opportunity to learn from our mistakes and reframe our failures is one I welcome with open arms.
“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
—Winston Churchill
Emily’s 5 Favorite Things
I took a hard left after devouring several fantasy romance series of books and have been diving headfirst into nonfiction. In addition to The Anxious Generation, I’m also reading Outlive with a healthy degree of skepticism mixed with receptiveness. Both are books you want to have a notebook nearby to read, because notetaking is inevitable.
Stretches of work shifts are made significantly less painful by meal prepping good food to eat quickly on shift. I have been loving Violet Witchel’s “Dense Bean Salads” on TikTok and IG Reels. My favorites are the Chimichurri Steak one and the La Scala salad dupe. I even bought glass pyrex food storage containers to make the dishes easier to store and cart to work. It’s a whole vibe and I’m here for it.
If you, too, have reached the age where sleeping on hotel pillows is a recipe for spending the next week with neck pain, allow me to recommend this travel pillow. It rolls up and can be carried on atop your rolling suitcase, or it fits easily inside a carry on and makes sleeping while traveling a much more successful endeavor.
As a shift worker without a consistent schedule rotation, routine is not something that usually makes itself a part of my life. But I am currently on a 439-day streak on Duolingo (learning Portuguese!) and I play three New York Times games every morning. I do Wordle, then Connections, then Spelling Bee, in that order.
In talking to my patients, I hear a lot of mixed reviews about physical therapy and its efficacy. But after having had physical therapy on both an old shoulder injury and now my knee injury, I have to say I’m skeptical about their negative reviews. I can’t speak highly enough about how wonderful PT is. I’m sure a lot has to do with the quality of your therapist, and I feel like I scored an amazing one. It’s amazing how strengthening the right areas of your body can relieve pain and improve agility.
In gratitude,
Emily Fleming
P.S. Emily wrote beautifully about women’s changing roles in her last letter. Read it here.
