Sliding on Ice with My Daughter
Turning an Emergency into a Deeper Connection
We got to the top of a hill and I stopped the car, less than a mile away from my daughter’s playdate. It looked shiny and dry on the road. Nobody else was driving.
By our house, all the ice had melted. But now we were in another micro-climate. On a hill. Surrounded by trees offering shade.
I checked the car’s manual briefly to learn that putting the car in “B” had something to do with a low gear. I still don’t get why it’s labeled “B,” but I put the car in “B” anyway.
“What are you doing, Dad?” my daughter asked.
“Just making sure the car will be safe as we go down this hill,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’ve driven on roads like this before.”
As we started down the hill, I could see the map showing a right hand turn near the bottom of the hill. Otherwise, it was a straight shot down.
The car wanted to go, even as I tapped the brakes to stay slow. Very quickly, slow was no longer an option. Anti-lock brakes refused—brakes no help. The road—one inch thick with ice.
A wave of heat came over me. “Oh shit, I should have known better,” I thought as I lost control of the car.
My nervous system kicked in, flooding me with focus and presence. The car picked up speed. We were in real danger.
Now, I’ve driven on roads like that before, but not exactly. We grew up around a lot of snow in Toronto, Canada. I went to college in upstate New York. So the sight of snow or ice on the roads doesn’t worry me the way it does others. And in this moment, this confidence felt terribly unfortunate.
I had made a bad decision.
The car managed to stay in the center of the road, like a bobsled without any turns to make. By essentially letting the car continue straight down the hill, I kept us from smashing into the parked cars we flew past.
As we neared the turn, I told my daughter, “We’re supposed to turn here, Sweetie. But it’s not safe so I need to drive straight.”
The road started to level out. But the car had a lot of momentum, as the next danger came into view. If I couldn’t stop the car in time, we would get to a downhill turn in the road. We wouldn’t stand a chance. Neither would the car, bush or mailbox that would no doubt be offered to slow us down.
The road ahead felt like a waterfall. I had no idea where it led, other than down and to the right.
I spotted several small pine branches on the road near the left curb before the waterfall’s edge. I decided they might give me enough traction to stop the car. Pulling over and facing the choice to stop or hit the parked car a few doors down, I was able to get the car to grip on those smaller branches and come to a full stop.
We had missed our turn and going up the hill seemed impossible. We were stuck between a waterfall and an icy slope.
It was around 9am on a Friday. I had a large bottle of water in the car and no snacks. I could be late to work. We were in a neighborhood.
But my nervous system was activated. The adrenaline pumped. I could look at the map, but I couldn’t tell how the roads around me dipped or rose.
And then I realized, my daughter must feel what I’m feeling. Even without words, she picks up on my energy. She’s very observant, like I was as a child.
I turned around and looked at her wide eyes and serious mouth.
“That was scary for me,” I said. “I lost control of the car on the way down the hill. But we’re safe now and I’m going to keep us safe.”
“Am I going to go to my friend’s house?” she asked.
Her question melted my heart.
“No,” I said. “It’s not safe to drive there. I’m going to think about our choices and figure out the safest way to get us back home.”
It was at this moment that I realized the most important choice I had to make. I could get trapped in anxiety about the situation or guilt myself for my terrible choice to drive down that hill—but both of those choices would take me further away from my daughter.
I made a better choice. This was an opportunity for an adventure together. I wanted her not just to hear me say we would be okay, but to feel it in the way I responded—in the way that I stayed connected to her.
I heard this question in my mind: “how might I show her an appropriate, human response to a situation like this?”
My nervous system was in a sympathetic state (i.e. fight/flight) and rightly so. I had needed energy to get us out of that slippery situation, even if the actual danger had subsided.
To act decisively, I needed to keep some of that energy but to make the right decisions I needed to tap into my ventral state (i.e. regulated) so I could perceive and act with clarity.
Now, at that moment, I didn’t have that fancy nervous system language I’m using now.
I’ve since then been engaged in a course for nervous system regulation, based on polyvagal theory. Why? Because, as a parent, self-regulation is one of the greatest gifts I can give my self and my family. I’ve learned that one of the ways to get into a regulated state (within which I make my best decisions) is to connect to a loving, peaceful memory. Not by using words—because our nervous system doesn’t understand that kind of language—but by feeling the memory in my body as a way to “show” my nervous system that I am safe.
As I regulate my nervous system, my mirror neurons communicate my state of being to the human beings around me and encourage their regulation based on my own.
This natural impulse towards an adventure that my daughter and I would have together was akin to a loving, peaceful memory recall. But instead, I envisioned the feeling of how this would go in the future. And it worked!
I felt more clear and dropped the adrenaline, anxiety and guilt by several levels. As you might know, being in a sympathetic (fight/flight) state for a short period is fine—but if you stay there too long, you can do physical damage to your body.
It's not only exhausting to spend so much time in a state of high alert, but it can also be physically damaging. The physical consequences of acute stress can include high blood pressure, migraine headaches, and exacerbation of fibromyalgia, chronic gastritis, and temporomandibular joint (TMJ) symptoms.
A van pulled up on the road behind us, where we had missed the turn. The van got stuck on the hill against the curb and moments later a guy got out and started putting chains on his tires.
“Okay, let’s get out and talk to that guy,” I said.
“I don’t want to get out!” my daughter shouted, pushing her legs into the back of my seat.
“You don’t have to,” I replied. “You can stay here or come with me. I’m going to talk to that man and find out about our options. I bet he’ll know something.”
“Okaaaay,” she said with her teeth clenched.
The trees sparkled with icicles. The air was frigid. Over the next 20 minutes here’s what unfolded…
My daughter held my hand as we navigated the ice and she fell three times. Each time, I helped her land softly. By the third time, she said, “That time I hit my bottom but it didn’t even hurt.” Her regulated self was coming back online, just as mine had.
From the man in the van, we learned that if we could get to the cross street we’d missed, we could (probably) safely get to a major road that was cleared.
I realized [hand slap to forehead] that we had two tire cables in the trunk, so I put them on the front wheels. Cables aren’t great for driving on ice, but they’re better than nothing.
I leaned into my high school physics knowledge and wondered if driving backwards up the slight hill to the cross street would actually put more weight on the front tires with the cables, giving us more traction. A quick search online confirmed this could help —thank you, random Reddit forum 👍
At every step of the way, I told my daughter what I was doing and why. I let her hear the curiosity, discovery, and determination in my voice, as if to show her nervous system, “it’s just a puzzle we have to figure out. And we will!”
Had I stayed dysregulated and tried to assure her, she would have smelled the bullshit and likely stayed dysregulated herself.
An unexpected angel appeared in the shape of a very large truck with chains, coming down the large hill without sliding a bit. When it turned on that cross street towards the main road, I could see the truck dropping gravel to provide more traction on the ice.
The magical combination of high school knowledge + Reddit got us up the slight incline to the gravel without sliding at all. We ended up making it to the major cleared road but had to turn around due to a road block and then… we were able to drive up the steep slippery ice hill of doom, thanks to the gravel.
Revisiting one’s traumatic territory with a positive outcome—that’s what they call a “corrective emotional experience’ : )
We made it home.
As we walked in the house, I asked my daughter if she was disappointed about missing her playdate.
“Not really,” she said.
She didn’t say much more than that, but I could hear in the tone of her voice that she felt safe and embodied—regulated. I could feel it from her. After all that morning excitement, perhaps she had enjoyed a similar spirit of adventure and felt connected to me, as I had with her.
I know I will never forget that experience—I hope she never will either.
As I am learning, my first job as a parent is to notice dysregulation in my body, especially when there is no actual threat presenting itself. On a regular basis, I am getting dysregulated as a response to my kids’ dysregulation!
My second job is to bring more regulation to myself (in their presence, if possible) and then through the state of my body, show their body that we’re all safe. Not to tell my kids to calm down. Not to blame them for acting out when they are dysregulated and don’t know how to regulate themselves yet.
My self-regulating practice doesn’t always produce the kind of results I sometimes wish it would (i.e. immediate shift in my kid’s behavior). Nor am I always able to regulate and come from that place, sometimes I just shift my state a bit. But it’s okay with me because the effort is not a quick-fix—I’m in this for the long-haul.
Little by little, the more I mirror regulation, I believe their bodies will notice and learn what I am learning too.
PS: I made an email mini-course about nervous system regulation for dads…
So much to love about this! Thank you for that ride.