Parents Talk Back

When Tyler Frank, 37, quit a six-figure job two years ago, he wanted more than a career change. He had that uneasy sense that there was more to life.

He had worked for a decade as an attorney in the corporate department of Armstrong Teasdale. His work focused on mergers and acquisitions. Much of his life revolved around his work. When a client emails you at 11 p.m., he explained, you get up and go to the office.

It wasn't that he disliked his work, but he wasn't exactly fulfilled, either. He and a girlfriend had just broken up. He felt out of shape and stuck in a rut.

"Days were dripping off the calendar and time was going by, but I didn't feel like I was really developing or growing," he said.

He decided to join his father as a lawyer for the family business, a St. Louis mortgage company. But before he jumped back into his career, he took a month off to travel and do things he had only dreamed of: Climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, go on a safari in the Serengeti, camp for two weeks on an expedition in the Galapagos Islands.

The experiences forced him out of his comfort zone. They also ignited a passion for adventure and a desire to push himself. On a whim, he signed up for the St. Louis Rock 'n' Roll marathon. He hardly trained for it, and it was painful to finish, but he did it.

It made him ask himself: What's next? It needed to be something really outside the realm of what he considered possible. Why not a Half Ironman triathlon? It's a grueling long-distance endurance event, in which participants complete a 1.2-mile open-water swim, followed by a 56-mile bike ride and 13.1-mile run.

He asked his father last year if he wanted to train with him.

"Yeah. That sounds cool," said his father, John Frank, 63. "I'll do it with you."

"Dad and I didn't even own bikes. I hadn't been on a bike since I was 12. I hadn't been swimming since I was a kid," Tyler said. Together, they hired a coach and dived into the training. Last fall, they crossed the finish line in Racine, Wisconsin, together.

"I'm so proud of you," Tyler said to his father.

"I'm so proud of you," his dad said to him.

Two months later, they completed another Half Ironman in Augusta, Georgia.

It's not surprising, then, that Tyler would set his sights on the full Ironman, considered among the most difficult single-day sporting events in the world.

The training consumes much of your life: The early mornings and late evenings before and after work, and most of the weekends, are spent building endurance and speed to be able to complete 140.6 miles within 17 hours. When the training mileage amps up, you spend six hours on Saturday and six hours on Sunday swimming, biking and running. For months. You give up your social life.

After finishing three Half Ironman events the first seven months of this year, however, Tyler's mental energy and stamina were flagging. His coach noticed, and emailed him in July, saying: You can physically hurt yourself for the rest of your life if you don't commit to the training.

Tyler doubled down. He spent the next six weeks focusing on getting himself ready.

Finally, his goal was in sight. The race was a week away, and he felt ready. His coach told him he was prepared.

"The only thing you do now is don't get hurt," he said. "Be careful."

Tyler, his coach and another training buddy went out for an easy morning swim and bike ride exactly a week prior. It was a foggy, overcast and wet morning. They got on their bikes after a 40-minute swim and crossed over a flat bridge he's crossed more than 20 times during his training. It has a serrated grate over a section of the road. It makes a buzzing sound when you ride over it.

He and his buddies were talking about the Ironman tattoo they planned to get on their calves after they finished the race.

And that's when his bike slipped and flew out of control. He fell hard on his elbow, hip and knee. The serrated edges in the road punctured his skin. He had a deep gash in his arm and knee, and he was bleeding profusely.

"I was so lightheaded and dizzy," Tyler remembers. His coach wrapped him in a towel and drove him to the hospital. "I knew I was bruised and punctured," Tyler said. "I thought it would get better within a week."

His parents rushed to meet him at the hospital. His father was surprised to see him still in good spirits.

"He thinks he's going to be in the race next week," John whispered to his wife.

The doctor walked in after an MRI and spoke bluntly: Your tricep has detached from your arm. You can't swim. You can't bike. There's not a chance in the world you can be in this race.

He needed surgery.

Tyler sat in the hospital bed, still bloody, with his family around him, and the doctor's words hit him.

He broke down and bawled.

And then he got over it.

"OK, I'm done," he said. "Yeah, it sucks, but there's nothing you can do.

"I know I would have finished the race. That's good enough," he said.

He called and cheered his coach and friend when they completed the race seven days later. He doesn't know if he'll ever be able to go through the training again and give it another try.

"So, I don't have an Ironman finisher's medal or tattoo, but I don't need that to validate my self-worth," he said.

Maybe there was something just as profound to learn from the journey: A failed attempt is not a failure.

He and his father plan to complete another Half Ironman together next spring.

By now, most of us have a pretty good idea of what we think about the shooting of Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager shot repeatedly nearly three months ago by white police officer Darren Wilson.

We have arrived at our conclusions based on reports we may have read or seen, the people we've talked to about it and what our own experience or gut tells us likely happened. It's similar to how we make up our minds on most issues.

So, let's do a quick test to see how open our minds really are when we hear about socially divisive issues. Make a list of up to seven of your close confidants, with whom you most often talk about important matters. Seriously, do it right now. Jot down those names.

Now, let's look at that list a little closer. Chances are high that if you are white, most everyone else you talk to about topics like Ferguson are also white. In a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, three-quarters of white respondants said that their closest confidants only included other white people. The same sort of insulation was true for slightly less than two-thirds of black Americans.

The people we discuss events with influence the way we think about them, and a vast majority of us only talk to people who look and think much like we do.

We already live in an "echo chamber" of news nowadays. We can choose to get our information from news sources that share our own biases. It makes us feel good to have our assumptions reaffirmed, even if the actual facts run counter to what we believe. If we do the same with our friends, where is the trusted source who may actually challenge our preconceived notions? How do we even begin to consider the point of view of someone who has had a different life experience if we never seek a divergent opinion on such issues?

Even if your short list includes some racial diversity, how many conservatives included a liberal on their list, or vice versa? Do you regularly seek the input of someone you respect or like whom you know is likely to come from a different political, religious or racial background than yourself?

One of the most striking things Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III said, in the aftermath of protests that rocked the region and captured the attention of the world, was that he had no idea his city had areas of deep racial tensions.

The St. Louis suburb doesn't have a race problem, he insisted.

He had no idea.

"I keep a lot of African-American friends -- some of my dearest friends -- but when we hang out at the brew house, we don't talk about these issues," he said in a Washington Post article.

So it's not enough to simply have friends who may hold different points of view. We have to actually be able to discuss something deeper than the latest sports news or personal gossip with them.

That's hard to do. Why approach a topic that's likely to cause conflict when most of us simply want to be validated by the people we choose to be around? Life can be fractious enough. But when we insulate ourselves, we end up with huge, gaping holes in our understanding of the world.

Most of us hate how polarized our society has become in its discourse about race and politics. Here's a simple way to begin to make a small, personal change: If you like someone well enough to share a drink or meal with them, consider asking a question about a difficult topic, like Ferguson or police violence. Instead of approaching the conversation as a conflict or a way to "win" or score a point, consider asking a question and just listening to the response.

Yes, just take a minute to listen to what another person might have to say. There's a good chance that if they know you have a different opinion, they will soften their own words when they respond. Don't take the answer as a personal attack or indictment of yourself.

If what you hear makes you so upset that you can't bear listening anymore, just change the subject. We've all had conversations we've had to walk away from. Later on, try thinking about what was said.

It's hard to separate ourselves from the ethnic, social and political groups to which we belong -- our tribes, per se. But consider this a personal moment to be brave. Consider it a chance to make our society more tolerant and understanding. Consider it a chance to show our children how we continue to grow and learn our entire lives, even by the friends we choose and how we talk to them.

Look at the list you made, and ask yourself what it says about you.

Some will argue that it's the very first year of life. It's hazing that brings new parents to their knees: shock therapy for the 18 years ahead.

That's when parenting is most demanding, some say -- in those around-the-clock blurry days and nights.

But there's a reason the next year is called the "Terrible Twos" -- a time of meltdowns, the oft-repeated "No!" and high-speed chases, always potentially damaging to body and property.

If you escape the horribleness of the Twos, the Threes will get you, someone always chimes in.

So, when does it get easier? And which is the most difficult age to raise a child, truly?

As the mother of a newly minted 12-year-old girl, I keep hearing the words of an older colleague haunting my difficult days: Little people, little problems. Big people, big problems, he liked to say.

Curses.

He may have been right.

The longest year may vary by gender and temperament. But a fair number of parents of daughters have warned me that there's a special kind of torment that happens around the ages of 12 to 14.

It was the sage Nora Ephron who advised getting a dog when your children hit their teens.

"When your children are teenagers, it's important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you," she wrote.

St. Louis-area clinical social worker Debbie Granick has two daughters, ages 12 and 14, and a 16-year-old son. If anyone is walking through the fire, she is.

"The worst year is the one you are least prepared for, when their behavior is most not what you had in mind," Granick said. "It's when you are put in the position of having to be (the) person you least like."

That person might be when you are sleep-deprived and angry at a colicky infant. Or it might be when you resist the impulse to slap a 12-year-old talking back to you, she said.

"It's when they hit on your vulnerabilities," Granick said. "Those years are difficult for everybody." It's typically when parents most often turn into a version of themselves they'd like to keep hidden from the world.

If you look at it through the lens of child development, however, there are biological and social reasons why certain years have a reputation for trying the patience of parents.

In the early years, when toddlers make the discovery that they are different and distinct people from you, they want to maximize that by testing every limit, Granick said. The period from about age 5 to 10 could be considered the golden age of childhood, she added, with a certain level of smoothness in routines.

But in early adolescence, a combination of hormonal changes, a more intense awareness of peers and less security in oneself throws that period into an abyss of frustration and power struggles.

You can't hold it against a baby when he cries all day. As much as it wears down your psyche and emotional reserves, intellectually you know it's not the child's fault. Even with defiant, crazy toddlers, you realize that they are just learning socially appropriate behavior.

But by those later tween and teen years, you begin to hope the previous decade of parenting has made some sort of impression. This may be why these stormy years can feel like the most dispiriting epoch of parenting: You start to question where you went wrong to end up with a child who barely tolerates your presence.

"You went right!" Granick says. "It is their developmental role to challenge everything you've taught them. You have raised a developmentally appropriate child, and you should look at some of the ways in which they are difficult as signs of success."

Even if it's considered "developmentally appropriate," it hurts when someone you love speaks to you disrespectfully and willfully ignores what you've asked them to do. When a child's behavior takes swings of intolerableness, it affects the parent as well. When a child begins to withdraw or shut you out, you wonder how long it may last.

Most of us can likely remember feeling terribly aggrieved by our parents during some phase of our childhood. And every parent of an adult child I've spoken to says that, eventually, by the grace of that relentless passage of time, even teenagers come back around.

Isn't there a way to bypass the worst of it? What can you do to shorten the later-stage Terribles so they don't last two, three, four or more years?

Granick suggests bearing in mind that when children are least lovable, it's precisely when they need the most love. Don't feel compelled to explain or respond to the content of their arguments, she said. But respond to the feeling they are trying to express.

"You don't have to correct the feeling," she said. You can revisit an episode later, outside the heat of the moment, to try to discuss a problem from another perspective. But, "you don't have to correct everything," she said.

It was the same approach we used when they hit the twos and threes: Pick your battles.

Would you swap a defiant, crazy toddler for a defiant, hormonal teenager?

Chances are, the toddler is cuddlier. But then again, the teenager is potty-trained.