Do you remember making paper chains? I’m talking about the kind where you take a piece of construction paper and tear or cut it from its short edge into multiple strips. Maybe you were the type (like me) who would fold the paper accordion-style into multiple same-sized strips, and then cut each fold line so that you end up with ten or more strips of paper.
Or maybe you’re like my daughter, Bugg, who prefers to measure with scissors and her eye, cutting each strip where it feels right.
Maybe you’re like me and you coordinate your different colors into a recognizable pattern: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple.
Or maybe you’re like Bugg, and you choose the next color based on what feels good at the time. Maybe there are two blues in a row. Maybe you use another yellow even though you just used yellow two links ago. No matter – it feels right.
This past holiday season, darling Bugg got it into her head to make a paper chain that was as long as our one floor of our house. At first it seemed like an insurmountable task – she didn’t think she’d ever make it. But as she looped strips of construction paper together, taping them with tiny pieces of tape to hold them together, the chain grew longer and longer, and in seemingly no time, it reached all the way from one end of the dining room to the far side of the living room.
What were we to do with so many yards of décor? It was too big for the Christmas tree, so we wound it around the entire room, from tree to bookshelves, to shutters, to curtain rods. Its colorful presence bedecked every corner of the living room.
Then, slowly, the tiny pieces of tape that she had used to hold the links together started to lose their stick. She told me that she’d used tiny pieces of tape to conserve it, so that she didn’t use too much. She’s aware of my concern about overusing resources. (Mom cringe moment here). The chain started to come apart. Sections of it slid behind the couch, slipped under the tree, fell in piles on the bookshelves.
I let the piles of colorful rings collect and sit, partly because I wanted Bugg to fix them, and partly because it seemed there was always something more important to do than to repair paper chains with tape.
Finally, once Valentines Day was over and so was my season of decorations, I laid out the paper chains and started fixing them. I told Bugg it was a good day for it, and she agreed, then ran off and did something else.
So I fixed separated pieces of paper back together and rejoined links that had broken. The chain took up the entirety of the living room floor. The kids and the dog stepped around the long, colorful snake of construction paper.
Bugg eventually came and knelt by me and took over. Instead of making the links myself, I became the tape dispenser and paper chain nurse, handing her the pieces that she needed as she surgically reattached the broken strips.
Then I saw her take an open strip – meant to be used to link two pieces of chain together – and make it into a loop. She asked for tape. I paused.
I saw the error she was about to make: she was securing the loop before winding it through the two separate pieces of chain to connect them. It’s something our brains do all the time – skipping steps in the process and expecting to get the same outcome. It was such a simple and easy fix. Plus, I clearly had the right answer and could quickly remedy this situation.
It was on the tip of my tongue to correct her. To say, “Oops! Remember to put that strip through the two loops before taping it,” but something (years of therapy and parenting podcasts?) stopped me.
I handed her the piece of tape. She linked the two ends of the strip together. She looked at what she now had: two separate paper chains, and one loop. “Oh,” she said, “I see what I did.” And she went on to fix it.
I didn’t say a word. She did not blush, or act embarrassed, or apologize. She simply took apart the link, looped it through the two ends of the separate paper chains, and then reattached it so that they all held together.
It was a small moment: it took place in seconds. But once the chain was complete, a profound feeling of relief washed over me. I felt so glad that I didn’t intervene. Do you know how satisfying it is to make paper chains? You start with something very small and flat: a piece of paper. And you finish with something as long as the room and three-dimensional: a chain. With each link that you secure, it grows bigger. It takes up space.
As I watched Bugg complete the chain, I wondered, What had I almost taken from her in that small moment? In pointing out the problem, I would have robbed her of the satisfaction of analyzing the mistake, diagnosing the problem, and figuring out the solution. I would have been satisfied that the chain was complete, but she would have felt corrected for doing something wrong.
It was one of those rare, heavens-opening, clear-eyed moments as a parent, when you know just what your kid needs (or doesn’t need!) And as soon as it happened I knew that I would remember it when bigger moments happen in the future: she dates someone who will break her heart; her friends leave her out of a game; she has to decide where to go to college.
In each of these cases, and in many others, there will be small moments where I think I know how to fix the chain and I can either take over and tell her my right way, or I can sit, and watch, and offer help when it is asked for. And that help might not be the help that I want to give; it will more often be the help that I’ve been asked to give.
And I hope, in those moments, that I can pause and resist the pull to tell her what to do, to make her decisions for her, to rob her of that satisfaction that comes from taking action, realizing it didn’t give the desired outcome, and taking action again.