Legit Parenting
Legit Parenting
Mom's Playbook: Life Lessons That Last a Lifetime (Part 2)
In this touching two-part series, Craig shares the impactful and profound life lessons he has learned from his 98 year old mom. Craig shares a heart felt tribute that reflects on the small yet meaningful moments that shaped his childhood and the wisdom his mother imparted on him through both her words and actions.
From teaching the importance of family dinners and structure, to demonstrating resilience in the face of profound loss, Craig's mother imparted on him that parenting isn't about perfection – it's about being "this side of good enough." Craig shares poignant stories like his mother's final night with his father in hospice, her tradition of waving goodbye until her children were out of sight, and their ongoing playful debate about who had bluer eyes, which illustrates how the smallest gestures of love can leave the most lasting impact.
In this episode Craig shares that even as he sat beside beside his mother, who sometimes struggles to find her words, that even in the fog of dementia, her core essence – her smile, her joy in surprises, and her ability to show love – remains undiminished. This episode is a deeply personal narrative and tribute that reminds us that building a child's character happens one small moment at a time. Consistency, presence, and unconditional love are a testament to the enduring bond between parent and child, and how a mother's love continues to teach and touch your heart in life's final chapters.
Welcome to Legit Parenting, where imperfect parents build resilient kids and families. A place to learn real solutions based in brain science to fit your unique parenting style. We show you how to tackle today's challenges for children and teens. Remember, when it comes to raising kids, you just have to be this side of good enough. Join us and we will show you how this side of good enough. Join us and we will show you how. I'm your host, craig Nippenberg. I've been a child and family therapist for nearly 40 years. I'm the business owner of one of Colorado's largest private practices, best-selling author and father of four. In my fathering world, I've been a birth dad, a single parent, a step-parent, an adoptive parent, a parent of exceptional students and a grandparent of two. By my side is Sydney Moreau, our production manager and mother of three ages preschool through 18. Together, we bring you a guilt-free parenting perspective with solutions that actually fit into your real life.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Legit Parenting. I'm your host, craig Nippenberg, along with our producer, sydney Moreau. Here in Colorado last week we had a major fall snowstorm. It was interesting they were calling off school a day before and the next day it was sunny, but then over the weekend we got hammered. I think we had 13, 14 inches on my back deck table. Some places got two or three feet. Sydney, how did you survive the snow days with children at home?
Speaker 3:I got to say Craig, I do feel like those kids could have gone to school that day.
Speaker 2:And some would go off the day before. I know the storm didn't hit when it was supposed to. It was later.
Speaker 3:I hate to be one of those parents, but back in our day we would have gone to school. It just wasn't that bad. The weekend was fine. It was long, but by Sunday it was nice enough to get out. Saturday night was fine.
Speaker 2:My wife's a former school teacher for almost 30 years and she was always like we never cancel school for this kind of thing.
Speaker 3:I don't think we got very many snow days. I can remember a few.
Speaker 2:Snow days are a mixed blessing for parents. Part of it can be really fun. My son I used to build oh man, snow caves, snow forts. We actually had a snow cave on that storm when we had three fees in May or March, late March spring break. That was there for two weeks on the back deck and we actually slept in it one night. It was very fun and we'd make bridges in the front yard strong enough that he could stand on there with his Viking sword and stand up like he was the king.
Speaker 2:Lots of fun. But they are exhausting too, because then you got to go in and you got. Kids are wet, they're cold, they're hungry. It's pretty much nonstop for parents when the kids are home, all right. So today we're going to continue with our series of Parents Under Stress.
Speaker 2:And the last episode I started on taking the long view, really thinking about your children through their lifetime and your lifetime and what you want to impart to them. And this today is part two of lessons I learned from my mother. If you haven't listened to part one, I would encourage you to do so first so you get more of the background story. But I think again, just as a reminder child development, your child's development is like this gigantic stained glass window, bigger than anything at Notre Dame, and it's millions and millions of pieces of glass and the things I've learned from my mother. There's a few that were specific incidences, where she had one of her lessons for us that we often heard over and over, but so much of it was just her role modeling and how she lived, and those are the things that make up huge parts of my stained glass window, with just brilliant colors of just amazing times and amazing things. I learned from my mother, things I learned from my mother. So if you're listening right now and maybe you had a rough morning with your child or children, or you had a rough evening last night over homework or something and maybe you didn't parent as you had wished, it's okay because those are just small little pieces of glass and a glass made of millions that you were putting into your child and eventually they start making their own glass and building their stained glass window. It's over time and you have to take that long-term view. Okay, leaving off from last time, my mother's lesson to value what is truly important in life Now, when I was a kid, her father and his girlfriend would come over to visit.
Speaker 2:The grandparents would come to visit and his girlfriend was the grandmother I knew and they'd come over Sunday dinner or whatever and my mom's rule was we had to spend 20 minutes talking with them, sitting on the couch talking, and at the time it was like miserable of oh, I have to sit here, I can't play, I just want to run around. But we did and over the times I had so many great conversations with them and with Esther. We called her Aunt Esther. I still to this day remember the smell of Estee Lauder no 5, the cologne she wore, the perfume she wore every day, and I still have that memory deep inside of my brain. So, yes, we didn't want to have to sit and talk to grandparents, we wanted to play. But that's what was important.
Speaker 2:I also have so many memories of my mother when the power would go out at night and she would gather us all in that family room. My dad would start a fire in the fireplace and we would just sit there together and huddle on the couch and talk and be together, trying to stay warm. Most of the time us kids were thinking about it we can't wait till the power goes on so we can watch TV or go to our rooms or do things, but she just embraced that. It was her favorite thing. And over time she was always disappointed when the lights came back on. She just wanted to stay there. And I remember feeling the same thing just wanting the lights to stay off.
Speaker 2:Also a very distinct memory of it was in the 1970s. We were visiting Colorado and my brother and I wanted to go to McDonald's for lunch because they had the Olympic. I was in the I can't remember 76. They had this thing where if you went to McDonald's you got a little card and you could scratch it to see what you had won in honor of the Olympics. And my mom was like no, we're going to go to a creek and sit by a river and have our lunch. And there we were eating bologna sandwiches that she had packed, sitting next to a river in Colorado, and at first I was still pissed about not going to McDonald's. And then I got it. I understood it. We're in this beautiful place all together, just eating out of the back of the station wagon by the river, and she said what she said so many times. Etch this in your memory and it is etched in my memory to this day and it was way better than any happy—they didn't have happy meals back then. It was way better than anything we would have had at McDonald's.
Speaker 2:Another one my mother—there's a line, and I can't remember the theologian who said the two hardest things in life are saying hello and saying goodbye. My mother was one and I'm the same. I love to say hello and so does she, but we both don't look at goodbyes. And over the years, as us kids got older and we'd move to other states and we'd come back for a visit during college or in graduate school and after grad school, and any time we left my mother would stand at the doorway or when she was in independent living, she would stand on her balcony and she would wave to us as we drove away and I'd look in the rearview mirror and my mom was still there, waving until we went out of sight. It was always hard on her to say goodbye to us and she wanted to hold it on to it as long as possible. The other gift in later years, as I was living here in Colorado, she was back in Missouri Every birthday. She would call early in the morning and I would purposely let it go to the recorder when you have phones and recorders, those machines, and she would sing happy birthday and thankfully, when I turned 64 and 65, I let him record on my cell phone and I still have them on there, her voice weaker but still singing happy birthday to me. Sadly, this year, on 66, I didn't get the call because she can't use a cell phone anymore. But when I talked to her later when my sister was there, I said Mom, you forgot to sing Happy Birthday and she said I wanted to, but I don't remember the words anymore and I was like, oh so I still have those recordings which hopefully I'll never delete and figure out how to save them forever.
Speaker 2:Another lesson make your empathy a verb. I stamped that on my first book, wired and Connected, because the bottom line in the book is to help your children have empathy and do something with it. As a kid I was always called sensitive, which I couldn't. I hated it. I wanted to be tough. I didn't want to be sensitive. But that was something that my genes were given to me by my mother of sensitivity towards others and acts of kindness, always acts of kindness. And on that same thing she was not afraid to say to his children. You should be ashamed of yourself when we did something that went against our moral principles of expressing empathy to others. We earned it and there's much chaos around. Oh, you should never say shame to your children, which I don't agree with at all. I'll do a podcast on that one as to why. But I knew that I had not lived up to my moral standing. I knew that and my mother prompted that in me to remind myself. Don't do it again. Always express your empathy and be kind to others. Express your empathy and be kind to others, being resilient this one was role modeled by my mother to this day.
Speaker 2:I don't know how she survived some of the things she went through. Her fiancé was killed in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II, but three months later, there she was at the train station, union Station, st Louis, welcoming home the troops, even though she knew her fiancé wasn't coming back. When she was six or seven months pregnant with her first child, she found her mother who had died by suicide. Brutal things she experienced in her life. But she was always resilient and she'd love to say it all works out in the wash and when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I think another point that I learned so well from my mother in terms of valuing what's truly important was her deep love for my father and always understanding, even though with five kids and five teenagers and all the stuff we put them through and grandparents and great-grandchildren, she was there in love with my father.
Speaker 2:And one of the most meaningful moments of my life was when we heard from the hospice worker that my father was going to be dying in the next 24 hours and my son and I. This is back in 2006, I think it was no 2002. I lose track of time. It's been about 15 years ago since he passed. He was in his 80s and we drove back all night from Denver and we got there the next day. He was still alive. He made it through the afternoon and into the evening and it was time for us to leave and go to sleep. And I was there with my mom and my sister. And my mother said and this is her value she said I just wish I could sleep with him one last time. I just wish I could sleep with him one last time. And my sister wisely thought to go to the room next door and took one of those rolling beds out of that room because there was nobody else in there. My dad was the first person in a new hospice program he was number one and she wheeled it in next to him and put down the gate on the side of the bed. She put down the gate so she could be next to him and there was my mother, with her white hair and white tennis shoes on and she put her leg across his legs and her arm around his chest and we got to see her fall asleep with her husband one last time. And the next morning she woke up and was just so happy to have that one last moment. And he died about an hour later and I was there with him when he took his last breath. It was just so meaningful. But to see my mom just wanting to be with him one more night, just to put his arm around his chest, she knew what that love meant to her.
Speaker 2:After 60 years of being married and my dad was not always the easiest person to be married to. He could be rather uptight and I can remember so many times my mother saying Nip, you're all keyed up, nip, you're all keyed up, calm down, calm down. She was there, she balanced him out. But, boy, that was so touching. She also always encouraged us when things didn't go the way that we want it. Look for opportunities, because there's always going to be other opportunities when life throws you something unexpected. And I really live my life that way. I was telling a young man last night who has very strict plans for his future. He's an incredible high performer, high achiever and I said if you don't get into that school, there might be another one and you might find that's better than the one you wanted first. There's so many adventures I've had where things didn't go as planned and it was better. It turned out way better than I had expected. And basically her message was you have to embrace the good of life and the bad of life. They're all there. You have to embrace them all and find beauty in everything. My mother was always finding something positive, something beautiful, no matter what the situation was, having fun.
Speaker 2:My mother has an incredible sense of humor. She got it from her father. My grandfather was an old Irishman who was always making jokes. In fact, he ended up marrying Esther at Christmas, when he was like 90 years old, and he got pneumonia and he died three weeks later. And when I went to see him for the last time. He was in intensive care and he had this smile on his face, looked at me and said see what marriage will do to you. I'll never forget that. I'll never forget that. But she had his sense of humor and optimism and letting go of your worries. We had an ongoing debate since I was little, about whose eyes were bluer my mother's or mine and we'd always get into challenges no, my eyes are bluer. No, mine are. And we'd ask people whose eyes are bluer. But that went on for years until including when I last saw her. Enjoying life's adventures was always her main thing and remembering that life is full of surprises and you never know what's going to come your way. And, humorously, my siblings remember this too.
Speaker 2:We were on a family vacation. I think we were in Northern California and my dad turned up the heater on the heated blanket in their bed just as a joke on my mother and us kids were watching as she came out of the bathroom from her shower and my mother loves to sleep, she can fall asleep faster than anyone I've ever met and she jumped loves to sleep, she can fall asleep faster than anyone I've ever met and she jumped into the bed and five seconds later she threw open the covers, going whoa, it's hot in here. And us kids were just laughing. It was so fun, and one of the ones recently this has been about 10, 12 years ago my son and I took her to a yurt in northern Colorado which is like a Mongolian hut it's like a frame with a tent on it deep in the mountains, to one of my favorite places in the world called Dancing Moose Yurt, and she needed to use the odd house and so she went in the odd house and I decided to play a prank on her and I threw some rocks up on the roof of the bathroom just to scare her a little bit. It was right in the wilderness and I'm laughing. And then I don't hear anything and I'm like Mom, are you okay? It was just me. And there was no answer and I went running down the ramp to the door, burst open the door and there she was, smiling and she said you just thought you killed me, didn't you? And laughing. I'm like, yes, that was horrible, what a prank. So we were always pranking each other and she had the last one on that one. That was something I'll never forget, and the last couple, I heard someone say it. Oh, it was yesterday.
Speaker 2:I learned of the passing of a person at the National Association of Social Workers who I'd worked with. I'm involved with the organization, I head up the Children and Family Committee and the head had an urgent meeting for us to attend and he came on and said that she had passed and then said what she did for NASW was her calling, and I couldn't have agreed with it more because we were always taught we had a call. Now, I came from a very conservative, religious family so naturally it was related to God. God has called you here for a reason and whether or not you are a person of any faith or none, there's still a call for your child to figure out what are their talents, that they have been given, to be part of their call, what purpose will you serve and what acts of charity will you perform. That was what we were taught and I find that so important. There's so many young adults now are adrift and not sure what their call is and nobody's really ever talked to them about. You have a purpose for why you're here and you have to find that purpose and that takes time and reflection.
Speaker 2:I thought I was going to be a pediatrician and to like cut off the end of my thumb and a cheese grinder at a pizzeria in college and realized I don't like blood, fat or bone Like. I was so creeped out and I thought that's not going to work for me. I can't even stand it when little children wiggle their teeth at me and show me a loose tooth and I just want to barf. But it was in silent reflection in Switzerland that I decided I would be a child therapist and I'd use my love of children in a different way, and that worked out pretty well. I'll also remember in third grade we used to get report cards in Sunday school including your attendance, whether you attended or not. It was pretty strict. But the third-grade teacher wrote that I could be a future minister and my mother was just over the moon with that thought. She was just so proud of that. And I did go to seminary.
Speaker 2:However, the seminary I went to was a bit further left than what I was raised with, and so I have many different views on religion or beliefs than my mother does. But still at my core was the idea of how do I serve God's purpose, how do I serve that and her favorite song at church, which now has a horrible meaning, related to the Crusades. There's a famous song Onward Christian Soldiers. And it wasn't the idea that I was going to go raid some country somewhere else. It was the idea that we were there for a purpose, we were to march forward and do things for others, and that was ingrained deeply in my heart and related to that my mother. It was always the thing she would always ask me is do you believe in Jesus?
Speaker 2:Now, over the years, as I changed my different beliefs, my thoughts about religion and God and who God is, and I've studied all the world's religions, most of them those beliefs are much different than my mother's, but what I got from her was a simple faith or trust. You trust in God or trust in the universe. It's just a very simple faith that you trust in humanity, you trust in others and you live by faith that you'll make it through, even through the hardest times. You have to let go and live just by a simple faith. And while views of religion are much more different and complex, I still have that very simple faith and trust in the universe.
Speaker 2:And finally, for my mother, it's her smile. She was always smiling. There wasn't a day that I woke up in my life as a child that she wasn't smiling. She was always smiling. And when I came to see her two weeks ago and came in, she just burst in a big smile, all dressed up, with her hair had just been done, and it was so cute. She was like Craig, what are you doing here? Even though my sister told her I was coming the day before she has dementia. And then she said life is just full of surprises. And I'm like, yeah, I guess it is when you have dementia you don't remember. So everything's a surprise. But there she was smiling and the whole time we were together she just smiled, looked at me and smiled and that is something I hold so deep in my heart.
Speaker 2:So for you parents out there, sometimes parents say you have to do big things for your kids. If you do these big things, then they'll have a happy childhood memory and they'll be happy and all this. It's not about that. It's the smallest things, just your smile, your touch. To your child that has more meaning than anything. Over the years They'll forget about the birthday parties or all these various things that you spent money on or did for them it really won't have much meaning, maybe faint memories of it, but that's about it. Most they'll forget, but they will never forget your smile. And, in closing, other things of beauty make me cry.
Speaker 2:It was funny as I was walking her. She was in a wheelchair and I was still a walker. She's in a walker still and we were going to the front door of her retirement community for I was leaving to drive back to Denver and one of the her hospice nurse happened to come by, who she really loves, and she treats my mother beautifully and she took a picture of the two of us together and then I said to her, blanking on her name right now, I said hey, I have a question for you. Whose eyes are bluer, me or my mom's? And she said I think yours are Craig. And I laughed. I got you, mom. We have the final vote. My eyes are bluer, but your eyes are still blue. They're faded now with time and she didn't open them very wide anymore, but they're still blue and we had a little fun.
Speaker 2:And then the best part, that part of me wishes. I'd thought about filming it with my camera quick, but I just wanted to enjoy it. So she was sitting in the lounge chair by the fireplace, next to the double glass doors to leave that open when you walk in front of them. And there she was waving goodbye to me and I walked out and I turned back and looked back through the glass and there she was still waving and if she could have she would have run out to the parking lot.
Speaker 2:I know my mother. If she could have she would have run out and continued to wave till I was out of sight. It's that wave and her smile that is in my heart forever. I love you, mom and May. Her time is probably short at this point. Her memory is for sure going. Her body's strong, but those are the things she left me and all of those were built one small piece of glass at a time. You don't have to be a super parent. You don't have to do all these great things. You're just consistent about what you do and show your love, structure your children, teach them what's important. Oh, shani.
Speaker 3:That's just painful to think about saying goodbye to your parents, and I think the reflection you get to having young kids is the little things that I do day in, day out for my kids. Do you hope that maybe they'll remember?
Speaker 2:You don't do it with the intention, but no, but it's those things you do every day that are so important and they make up for any discord. Anytime you yelled at them, anytime you lost a little control and you wish you were a better parent. Those things outweigh that by far and that's why, for our listeners, I love to end every show with remember just relax. You just need to be this side of good enough. Thank you so much for listening and if you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and we will see you again as we continue our path on Parents Under Stress. Thank you very much.