The daily constitutional

From my posts of the past year or so, you might guess that I’ve been struggling a lot with parenting issues, and you’d be right.

Without getting into the details, it’s safe to say that I don’t currently enjoy spending time with my 4-year-old and my 6-year-old as consistently as a parent should. In fact, if we’re all hanging around the house together, there’s a good chance at any given moment that one or both are pushing my buttons with remarkable efficacy.

It therefore struck me as noteworthy that during our family’s time in Idaho this past week — when I was super-stressed out by the situation of being on vacation while also needing to work essentially full-time — I found pleasure in daily walks with my 4-year-old, in spite of myself.

Much has been written about looking at the world through the eyes of a child, blah blah blah. If I’m being honest, the eyes of my own children often leave me underwhelmed. When Ben and I are out walking, though, the sharing of explorations and observations somehow seems natural and fun. When he notices and comments on the lengths of our shadows, or the playful spurts of the lawn sprinklers, or the echoes from a tunnel that we just found, I don’t have to pretend to be interested. I am interested.

The pleasantness of these walks is both surprising and not surprising.

On the “surprising” side of the ledger, it seems odd that a simple change of venue can so consistently enable a positive experience with a kid with whom I clash just about every single day.

On the other hand, as long as I’ve been a parent, running or walking with the kids has provided recreation and/or relief. I suppose that this is just the latest iteration of that. Perhaps the key now is to not overthink it, but just do it — do the thing that we enjoy doing together. Not just when on vacation, but every week. Maybe even every day.