I have been home from Disney for two days. My feet are still in recovery. My heart is still full.
Here is what I was not expecting: to leave a theme park with parenting clarity.
There is a moment on a ride when everything drops away — the noise, the planning, the logistics, the things you forgot to do, the texts waiting for answers — and it is just the two of you, going somewhere fast, and she is screaming with joy, and you are screaming with her, and for approximately forty-five seconds nothing else exists.
That is a metaphor for what parenting a teenager actually needs.
We spend so much time managing. Managing the schedule, the behaviors, the moods, the school stuff, the social stuff, the health stuff, the faith stuff. We become the logistics department of our child's life and we forget to just be on the ride with them.
Disney forced us onto the rides. Literally. You wait in line and you get in and you go. And in the going, we laughed. We screamed. We looked at each other mid-drop and communicated something nonverbal that only happens when you are doing something slightly terrifying together.
My daughter looked at me on Space Mountain and her face was pure delight. She was not thinking about anything hard. She was just there, being fourteen, being alive, being on a ride with her mother who drove eighteen hundred miles through Texas to bring her here.
I want more of that. Not more Disney — though yes, also more Disney. I mean more intentional drops into just being with her. No agenda. No managing. Just: let's do this thing together.
Take them on the ride. Whatever the ride is in your life. The road trip, the spring break adventure, the trampoline park, the concert, the thing they asked for that you almost said no to because you were tired. Take them. Get in. Go.
The managing will be there when you land. The joy is only available in real time.
Buckle up, buttercup. Be on the ride. That is the whole point.