My Kids Do Listen. To some things | by Christopher T Hern | Aug, 2025

Stacks of plastic totes and cardboard boxes lie in neat rows, towering to the ceiling in the garage. It took a few days, but we’ve gone from having a tight and winding path through the basement to the stairs, and one that careened around the living room to the kitchen, to now having large blocks of clear floor space. It’s the small victories that keep you going.

A week ago we began loading a 26′ U-haul at the edge of the Kiroli forest in West Monroe, La. The heat notwithstanding, my family made what seemed like a never ending sequence of walking up and down the long ramp to the back of the truck. Then to the middle of the truck. When finally, we were at the back of the truck, it was dark and we were exhausted. This was a laborious process.

A quick side note, my wife and I had 2 daughters, then decided we wanted to have a boy. As luck would have it, we ended up with 4 girls. If you’re in to baseball analogies: we struck out and then some. It worked out for the best, though. My girls are my world, and even though our house is a whirlwind of estrogen and raging emotions, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Nevertheless, they aren’t 6 feet tall with bulging muscles. They are strong willed and they’re smart. As we marched up and down the ramp of the truck, like 5 stoic warriors staring at an enemy 4 times our number, they were pointing to ideal locations for totes, bags, and furniture. They used their Tetris skills in this real world Tetris scenario to pack our truck efficiently. We’ve moved quite a few times. This, however, was the first time the girls were heavily involved. This was also our magnum opus of tactfully placing our plethora of belongings into the back of a long truck. Teamwork makes the dream work.

The next day we made the drive. It wasn’t bad and mostly uneventful. We drove through some angry rain that made us question whether we should stop or not, but we kept going with limited visibility, our fingers crossed that our eyes and intuition would prevail.

We signed the paperwork, anxiously drove to our new home, and backed up the truck into the driveway. The girls cautiously walked into the house. What happened with them next is unclear to me as I began unloading the truck. I imagine after they examined their rooms and talked amongst themselves about their characteristics of their rooms. They then joined me in the unloading effort.

By this point in our moving endeavor, we were all exhausted. We were exhausted physically, mentally, and emotionally. We were drained. An interesting thing happened next. The girls caught some kind of mysterious wind in their sails. They proudly exclaimed (so that I could hear it) “we can hard things!”

This was an overwhelming moment for me. I preach to them about the comfort zone and how growth happens just beyond it’s borders. Often, I evangelize the fact that we get to choose our hard. Either we do things now that are hard and later life is easy, or we do things now that are easy and later life is hard. The overarching message I try to instill in them is that they can do hard things.

They still spend a fair amount of time on their electronic devices, but when we needed to come together as a family and tackle a grueling physical challenge, they rose to the occasion.