Hey Mom. Hey Dad. I see you out there, doing the best you can with not enough support. Trying desperately to live up to the Pinterest posts and scathing editorials written by Smothers across the globe. I see you crying yourself to sleep as you scroll through social media and seeing how you don't measure up.
How about I let you in on a secret? NONE OF US MEASURE UP. We are ALL in the same boat. Desperately trying to live up to expectations of marketing and media, striving to follow rules that aren't written down anywhere and that are CONSTANTLY changing. I am a mother myself, I have three children and we have been through it all. Poverty and famine and comfort and plenty. And I learned a lot of hard lessons along the way.
Lesson 1:
Your kids just want stability. They don't care how much or how little money you make. They don't care if you spend an hour making Bento boxes (they won't eat it anyway).
They just need to know that if they are thirsty Mom or Dad will have a drink for them. If they are hungry they will be fed. If they are scared they will be comforted. That baths will have bubbles and will end in a game of run from the towel. That bedtime will always be a game of how many stories can I get? All they need is to know that you are there. Always.
Lesson 2:
They are going to drive you insane. No matter what. It is part and parcel to living with and guiding another human being with free will. It's part of trying to reason with someone who has only read half of the rulebook. It's losing your temper and saying things you don't mean. But this not bad.
There are so many opportunities here to use these as a means of education. When we are open about our weaknesses, when we own our struggles and admit that we did something wrong or inappropriate and we apologize to our children for losing our temper or snapping at them, We are teaching them humility, humanity, and personal accountability.
Lesson 3:
They are going to grow up. They are going to become more and more independent and they are going to want to make their own choices. Even if you HAVE been there, even if you have all of the answers, even if you know exactly how it is going to turn out.....sometimes we have to know when to step back and let them make their own mistakes and learn from them. Be a safety net, not a helicopter. Some of our most valuable lessons are learned the hard way.
Why am I writing about this? I have three children of my own. They are currently 18, 14, and 12. They are all different, and all in different phases of their lives. And with each it is a whole new world for us as parents.
Last night I had an interaction with my 12 year old that prompted me to share my thoughts. I had a hard day, I had received numerous pieces of information that were incredibly stressful, and I was in the process of working on research for another issue. (Note, I had not shared any of this info with my child and therefore they did not have this info as a basis to make choices.)
As I was working on this project, my child said they wanted to show me something, and then continued to try to explain this thing and asked for it....I ended up in information overload because I was only half paying attention and trying to multitask. The overload was enough to tip me over into a minor anxiety attack which caused me to snap at them.
I stopped what I was doing because NOW they have my full attention, and I raised my voice and I said: "NO! JUST STOP! I AM TRYING TO TAKE CARE OF THINGS WE NEED TO WORRY ABOUT! I DONT HAVE TIME TO FOCUS ON THIS THING YOU SAW ON YOUTUBE! BESIDES! YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT YOU WOULD BE GETTING IN THIS MYSTERY THING AND I AM NOT SHELLING OUT AN EXTRA $20 A MONTH FOR YOU TO GET SOME DUMB THING YOU WON'T USE IN THE MAIL!"
YEP. I suck at life. I yelled at my kid. I took out my built up stress on my 12 year old. I disavowed his interest and I demeaned something they put value in without looking at it. This is not ok.
After I calmed myself I sat down with my child and we had a conversation that went a little like this: "Hey, I want you to know that what I did was not appropriate. I took my stress out on you because you were the last thing to trigger it. BUT I want you to know that what you did was NOT WRONG. You were working with the information you had, which wasn't much. And you are 12, I'm the adult and unfortunately I did not behave like one. What I SHOULD have done was tell you how I was feeling and the basics of why when I got home. You didn't know I was already stressed. I should have told you I was busy but I tried to do too much at one time.
There are a lot of different ways I could have behaved and handled it but I made poor choices that resulted in your feelings getting hurt. I recognize that I took away your ability to make informed choices when I didn't share with you, and I am very sorry for devaluing something you obviously have value in when I don't have information about it.
I am sorry for how I behaved, and I want you to know that just because I am apologizing that doesn't mean you have to automatically be ok. You are allowed to feel. You are allowed to be upset and I understand if you need some time to work through those feelings. But I will ask you to forgive me. And I want you to know that your forgiveness does not excuse or enable my poor choices. Forgiveness means that you trust me to learn from this and do better. Too often people use forgiveness as a means to continue to be toxic and not grow. You are within your rights to remove toxic people from your life. People become toxic when they don't grow, or change poor behavior."
Now this was a conversation and I omitted my child's responses but I think the important info is here. Own your humanity. Be humble. Admit that you need to and can grow. Because our kids mimic our behavior more than our words. Accepting these things into your life also removes so much pressure to BE PERFECT. When you own and accept your humanity you teach your children to value humanity in others and themselves, and you become empowered to live more authentically.
Listen, TL;DR you are doing a good job. Keep trying. Keep pushing forward. Keep striving. And if you are worried....then you are definitely doing it right. (Bad parents are often convinced they are perfect.)
Keep your head up, none of us know what we are doing. We are all in this together.
XoXo
Tiff
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