Ever find yourself halfway up a mountain, metaphorically or otherwise, and begin to doubt whether you can reach the summit? I'm Renee, and on today's Empowered Parent Podcast episode, I'll be relating my experience of climbing a 14er - a mountain peak over 14,000 feet high. It was an unplanned adventure that pushed me to my limits, but it taught me some valuable lessons about resilience, perseverance, and that inner strength we all possess but often underestimate. I'll be sharing this journey with you, from the awe-inspiring wildlife sightings to the physical and emotional challenges.
The twist? I'll be drawing parallels between my mountain climbing experience and the rollercoaster ride that is parenting teens and tweens. Yes, you heard it right! Much like climbing a mountain, the path isn't always clear. There are unexpected obstacles and steep inclines, but there's also breathtaking beauty and moments of joy. Join me as we discuss how to tap into our inner resources, persevere through the toughest parenting challenges, and maybe even find some inspiration along the way. Remember, no matter what mountain you're climbing, you have what it takes to reach the summit.
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Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Empowered Parent Podcast with Renee. Being a teenager is hard. Being a parent of a teenager can be even harder. Each episode we deliver tips, tools, tricks and stories to help you feel empowered, confident and energized as the parent of a teenager. Teenagers want to be happy. Sometimes they just need a little help along the way. Now here's your host, renee Sinning. Renee is a Certified Life Leadership and Success Coach for teenagers and their parents. She's also a mom of three young adults and an experienced high school educator of 18 years. Renee is well-versed in everything teen. Now, without any further ado, here's Renee.
Speaker 2:
Hey parents, it's Renee. Welcome to another episode of the Empowered Parent Podcast. On this episode we are going to talk about lessons learned after climbing my first 14er. So this episode is called Moose, marmot and Mindset. I meant to do it a few weeks ago but well, my daughter got married so I'm only getting to it now.
Speaker 2:
But about two weeks ago my youngest daughter and I Well, I should say my youngest daughter wanted to climb a 14er and I didn't feel comfortable with her doing it by herself because I thought that it was going to be like through the forest, like by herself. And so the mom in me just kind of panicked and I was like okay, I'll do it with you. Little did I know that there is no forest, because a 14er in case you're not from Colorado is a mountain, that whose peak is 14,000 feet high. But it's a thing in Colorado to climb 14ers. Colorado has apparently like 58 peaks. Now, it was never a thing of mine. We In Colorado Springs you can look outside and you see Pike's Peak In the background and it's beautiful. It is a 14,000 foot mountain. It's like way up there. It's stunning to look at. I love having it in our backyard and I don't mind driving up there, but the idea of climbing a 14er was not really on my bucket list. However, we did it, and so I want to share a little bit about that experience and what I learned. And so, first of all, when you climb a 14 or you're actually up in tundra world, meaning there's not really any trees because you're above the tree line so she kept telling me, mom, you don't have to go, you don't have to go, there's tons of people, there's tons of people on the trail. Because I'd never been on that kind of a trail, I didn't envision a lot of people. She was right, there were tons of people on the trail and she totally could have done it herself. However, I did it, I accomplished it. So I'm going to go through it and kind of share this experience with you. So, number one, it's documented for me and, number two, I can share some of the lessons I learned, because there is definitely lessons on that.
Speaker 2:
So the beginning so at the very beginning, we started, I think, around 11,000 feet. We started to drive two hours to get to the trailhead and I believe that was at around 11,000 feet and it started out okay. It actually started out going a little bit downhill over, like a boardwalk type thing, and right at the beginning we saw a moose. So that was cool. But how far are we going? And she points so far away to like the top of Mount Beardsdott and I was like, oh my gosh, that's super far away. So that was me to Kelly.
Speaker 2:
Me to me was I can do this, I can do this. It's not going to be as bad as it looks. In life you're most likely going to encounter times where the task in front of you seems impossible or unreachable. That's exactly where I was when I saw how far away this mountain was and how high it was. You might doubt your ability to get there, or even in life you might sometimes more parenting teens. We doubt our abilities as a parent, but it's in these moments that you actually find out how strong you are. Whether you're parenting or climbing a fort-teener, I consider myself to be in pretty good shape for my age. So I thought, okay, I can do this.
Speaker 2:
But from the beginning of our hike I was struggling, mainly from the altitude. Again, even though we live at 6,000 feet, starting off at 11,000, it messes with your breathing. But I still didn't expect that because I thought, all right, I'm totally acclimated to altitude. I ski not 14,000 square foot mountains, but I ski high mountains and I don't ever have any trouble with my breathing. But I did here now, of course we were walking right, we were constantly moving, and it started off downhill for a very short period of time and then started to go up and so after about an hour it wasn't too steep yet, I could still muster a smile. But I was really on the struggle bus. I was like, oh my gosh, and I had to borrow her inhaler a few times and I haven't used. I used to have exercise induced asthma, I don't have it anymore and I really used her inhaler like four or five times. That was interesting. So anyhow, we're by now, we're in maybe two hours in. I'm on the struggle bus, kind of slowing down.
Speaker 2:
So I would say to cal, go ahead, go your pace, because I'm not sure I'm going to make it, I'm not sure how it's going to go or if I'm going to get to the top, and I knew she really wanted to get to the peak. And then to myself I'm saying, okay, she has 35 years of me. Just put one foot in front of the other. Baby steps, baby steps are so stepped. I can do this. I can do this. Keep going, keep going. I had to dig so deep into every last bit of my mental and physical reserve to keep trucking. It was a continuous back and forth of conversations from me to me. So at this point again, I wasn't sure I was going to make it to the peak, but I knew I was going to try.
Speaker 2:
As parents of teens and tweens, when it comes right down to it, that's all you can ever ask of yourself is to do your best, to try your best, and sometimes you try something that doesn't work and you try again, especially when it comes to parenting teens with our son who had ADHD. Or we would try something and it might work for a little bit, and then it would stop working, and so we try again, again. And so some days you're going to make it to the summit, you're going to meet your goal, whatever that is. Some days, your kids are going to make it to their summit, whatever that is, and to meet a goal or something they had set. And other days you're not.
Speaker 2:
And on this day I wasn't sure I would meet my goal, and again, it wasn't a goal initially, but once we got there. It became one because I came all this way. I'm already two hours in. I'm going to try to get to the top, so at least I can say I did it at this point right and so it's okay, though I also knew that if I didn't make it to the summit, that was okay. I met someone along the way that was coming back down. It was an older guy, probably around my age ish, and he's like yeah, I had to turn around and just do the best you can, and everyone on this trail was so awesome. They would say how you doing? You know, just keep doing. You're doing great people really cheering each other on, which was great, and, as a teenager, that's what you want to surround yourself with those
Speaker 2:
are the kind of people you want to surround yourself with. The people they're going to lift you up when you're struggling, the people that are going to cheer you on when you accomplish something. A lot of times, teens will surround themselves with a certain group of kids. That doesn't really feel good to them inside, but they accept it because it lets them feel like they fit in, and that's that's a hard place to be, because anytime you have inner conflict with yourself, it's going to come out in some, it's going to manifest in some way, maybe through anger, through attitude, through giving up, through poor choices, whatever that is. And so, going up this trail, everyone was so supportive, whether or not you were going to make it to the top, that it was just a reminder that that's what we want in life. We want to always be surrounding ourselves with people. They're going to lift us up when we're doing poorly and when they're going to cheer lead us when we do great, because if we were surrounded by people that are jealous of us, those aren't our people. True friends are going to cheer you on and lift you up, and so that's kind of what I was experiencing as we went on the trail with complete strangers. And so, no matter which road in life you ultimately take, you just do everything you can to guide, support and influence your kids in a positive manner. That's what we did with our kids. That's what we did, especially with Nick. We tried our very best and that's all we could ever ask for ourselves. And if you remember my story, some of the time, for a period of time he went off the rails and, no matter what we did, he made choices that were not what we would have wanted for him, but we also. At times I question things, but I never really beat myself up because I knew that I did and that we did the best we could with everything that we had for our kids. So always remember that.
Speaker 2:
So anyhow we're going up, we're climbing the the trail, and the trail had, at the bottom of the trails, more gravelly, but as you go up the gravel, the stones get bigger and there are times where you're going over boulders. It's actually called scrambling when you're climbing boulders, and so Now we're getting further to the top, the boulders were getting steeper. The very last bit of this there was no trail at all. It was just so from where we were, and to get to the actual peak was a huge boulder field, like the mountain was all boulders and there was no path and there was no trail and there was no one with me. Kelly had already made it to the top and there was maybe two or three other people I could see at different places on this slide, boulder mountain, and so it was kind of scary because I was climbing these giant boulders. There wasn't anyone near me. It was like me, myself and me with a lot of rocks and boulders.
Speaker 2:
So similarly, similarly, when you're raising teens, some of life's boulders you are going to have to climb and they're going to be really big. This could be drinking, drug, sex, it could be an identity challenges, divorce, it could have been something to do with your job, and other boulders that you or your kids are going to have to climb are going to be smaller. Maybe your teen has an argument with their friends. It's true for us and it's true for our kids. In life we are going to have to climb big boulders and we're going to have to climb small boulders, but no matter the size of the Boulder, it's okay because, just like there was no path for me to reach the peak, I literally had to make my own. There's no set path when it comes to raising teens and tweens. Everybody's path is going to look different. That's why comparison is so dangerous. It makes people feel less, it makes teens feel less, it makes parents feel less. And so, even though it doesn't matter how you get there, or even if you get there wherever there is, it only matters that you do the best you can in any given moment on any given day, and you let that be enough, because that is a gift you give yourself and that is a gift that you give your kids.
Speaker 2:
When I was climbing up this last Boulder field, that was super steep. At that point I knew I had to make it because I was so close, but before that last ascent I didn't know. I could have turned around at any time and that would have been okay because I did do the best I could. Whether or not I made it to the top, it's always raising teens and treats blah.
Speaker 2:
Raising teens and tweens, and parenting teens and tweens is never going to be a straight shot. It's going to be crooked, it's going to be filled with mountains and boulders and peaks and valleys. It's going to have clear waters. It's going to have murky waters. All of this Now, because what goes up must come down.
Speaker 2:
Once we got to the summit, or once I got to it, kelly had been there like an hour before me we were only halfway done Because we had to come all the way down and I had tweaked my knee climbing over the boulder step. So we took small steps coming down, especially me, but again, that's okay because baby steps are still steps. I was in pain Literally the whole way down and it was a six and a half hour round trip hike and so I think we did like twenty nine thousand steps and so that whole second half I was hurting. I just was hurting, and sometimes that's gonna happen when you're raising kids you're just gonna be hurt as human beings that we have a lot of reserves within us and oftentimes we don't give ourselves credit for what we are actually capable of. On that day that I climbed that fourteen or I dug into all my physical and mental reserves like I never I really dug deep physically and I had so many conversations with myself mentally to make this happen, to get to the top, to try my best. And that means you can do it too. You have everything that you need within yourself or whatever mountain you may be currently climbing or will encounter in the future, and so there's doesn't have to be a path. You can make your own path. Your kids don't have to follow a path. They can make their own path. You're gonna have big boulders and small boulders and we just do the best we can. Now.
Speaker 2:
We did see a lot of wildlife on this and that made it worth it. We saw the moves. At the beginning we saw a bunch of marmots, which are these really cute alpine animals. I saw Pika's, which are like they're like alpine mice almost, but cuter. They're super cute, they have the cutest little ears and they're really hard to see. So I saw them twice. Kelly didn't see them at all. They blend in so well. And then we had a mountain goat right on our path and All of these animals are just so resilient to live at that altitude. But so are we, and so are you as parents. We're all resilient human beings, their resilient animals. You have everything with in you To get the results you desire, whether that's personally or parenting.
Speaker 2:
You may need help along the way. Your teens may be hot, need help along the way, and that's okay. You may need to lead it along the way. Your teens may need to lead along the way, and that's okay. Kelly was definitely cheerleading me going up and coming down. We were together more coming down once those first two hours past, but it's okay. You just do the best you can in any given moment. That's what parenting teens and tweens is all about. So I just want to share that and it was something I'm not gonna do again. That for me, was a one and done, but it was an accomplishment and I can say that at my age I climbed a fourteen thousand square foot mountain, but I'm equally proud of other mountains that I climbed, especially raising kids.
Speaker 2:
All three of our kids have had their challenges and their struggles and come out the other end. Our oldest daughter just got married this weekend. Nicholas, who struggled as a teenager every day, struggled all the time, is now twenty four and he didn't go to college and that's okay. It's not for everybody. He gets up every day and goes to work and lives on his own, and for him it was a really crooked path and it took him a whole bunch of different turns to get to where he is today, but he got there and so, no matter where you are right now where your kids are.
Speaker 2:
There are answers. You may need support and help along the way. I love working with teens and families. I love the mindset piece, because I think that's the bottom line. When you have that piece in place again, I had dug so deep into that on this track, but when you have mindset In place, you can dig into those reserves and you can get what you want. And it might take you longer to get there than you expected you might. The path might be not at all what you anticipate, but everyone has you can do it and you have everything within yourself to make that happen. Have a great week, parents.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for joining us this week on the empowered parent podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you'll never miss a show While you're at it. If you found value in this show, we'd appreciate a rating on iTunes, or if you'd simply tell a friend about the show, that would help us out too. Be sure to head over to ReneeStandingcom to pick up some parenting freebies. And remember teenagers want to be happy. Sometimes they just need a little help along the way.