4. Planting Seeds

April 13, 2021

Apr 13, 2021

I felt like a terrible parent.

A failed nurturer.

Inept and irresponsible.

Those poor little plants.

I helped my son plant a few jalapeño seeds last summer, as a do-at-home project with his day program. When the sprouts began to appear in July, it was a welcome touch of new life at a time when so much worry and fear and death enveloped the outside world.

Despite our cluelessness about how to raise them, these six brave seedlings grew steadily.

As they grew bigger, we split them into two pots. They were stressed by this at first, and I was afraid that we’d lost them then. I should have taken that as a warning.

But they regained their strength and thrived.

I failed them just as they were beginning to flower.

I became convinced that they must be feeling claustrophobic staying indoors—perhaps projecting my at-home-for-months uneasiness onto them. These living beings needed more space, more fresh air, more sun!

I’ll save you the gruesome details, but my transplanting efforts were devastating to those perfect little plants.

And to me.

*A “dramatic recreation” of the destruction.*

I kept apologizing to the jalapeños and to my son.

Of course, when I moved the pots from their positions on his kitchen counter, my son was not thrilled with the change. And now I was forcing him to bear witness to their slow death from his kitchen window, since I’d so cruelly banished them to larger pots on his front patio.

I genuinely don’t know if the kid cared about those plants at all, but I did.

I think my loneliness had been assuaged somewhat by the promise in those seeds—and when I realized too late that one tiny pepper had already sprouted, trying desperately to grow on a dying limb, I could not forgive myself for my inadvertent planticide.

But if I’m honest, even in a normal year, I am not a graceful mistake-maker.

I do not take errors lightly.

I am hard on myself for not knowing things I “should” know, for getting things wrong, for a multitude of imperfections.

The other night, I dumped half my bowl of chunky vegetable soup on my living room rug and I was so angry (and hungry) that none of my husband’s reassurances—that’s why we paid for the stain guard; that spot will be under the couch; hey, we need a new rug anyway—could subdue my fuming inner critic.

I know that we all mess up, and those mistakes are how we get better at life.

It’s what we tell kids all the time, isn’t it? Good things can grow out of mistakes.

But in reality, I seem to believe that I should be able to skip over those messy parts and do things right the first time.

Unfortunately, I see these perfectionistic tendencies in my son, too.

I see this when he is unsure of the answer to a question and, afraid to be wrong, refuses to guess.

I see this when he is hesitant to speak, not trusting his limited verbal ability to communicate what he means.

I see this in his oh-so-familiar reaction to a website or app that doesn’t perform the way he’s expecting, or when something gets broken or misplaced.

Some of this is related to his autism; but much of it is in his genes despite that diagnosis.

When he blows up over some small error, I see myself in him.

It’s hard to teach my son how to take blunders in stride, since I also feel that discomfort when I get things wrong.

I’ve been told that I can help my son learn how to cope with mistakes by making sure he sees that I slip up, too. If he can see others around him making mistakes without melting down, it may help him to accept his own without beating himself up so much.

I am supposed to talk out loud as I manage my own missteps, modeling positive self-talk and problem-solving.

To combat that inner critic when we mess up, we’re supposed to say things to ourselves that we’d say to a good friend who spills soup or kills plants. Constructive, supportive words.

Oh well, live and learn; you’re doing the best you can; it’s no big deal.

This does not come naturally to me. I need a lot of practice to make sure the model I’m giving isn’t full of self-flagellation and cursing.

And my son likely has what others with anxiety tend to have—a negative internal monologue that berates and scolds and discourages him from trying, telling him he’s doomed to fail.

We have some work to do to counteract these tendencies.

Maybe as I coach my son to quiet his own inner critic, I can calm mine down, too.

We can plant seeds of self-kindness instead of self-criticism.