I never assumed I would be a good parent. As a matter of fact I didn’t like babysitting and I generally found children unpleasant. I held no delusion that it was something I would excel at. I now have a 17, 15 and 11 year old and frankly I have no idea what I’m doing and you shouldn’t listen to my advice. This is everything I know about parenting.
Priorities
I’m an educator so my kids’ education has always been extremely important to me. I am sure I have failed my children in a hundred different ways but this is one area where I know I have not dropped the ball. Whether in homeschool, public school or now charter school I have pushed and pulled and managed and bullied our way through a system that is not always easy. I have made sure that they received support services or tutors or were pushed into more challenging classes. I got my dyslexic kid to read, my ADHD teenager to stay organized and I plan on doing the same for my 11 year old.
Set your priorities with parenting because you won’t succeed at ALL of it. Pick your battles and focus on winning.
Humans
You know how we tell kids that they are all unique and special and nobody is like them? Guess what? They are all unique and special and nothing like their siblings. HA! Nobody tells you that part. Kid #1 might only respond to strict punishment but kid #2 might crumble into a pile of tears just by you saying you’re disappointed. Kid #1 might need to be reminded twenty times to put her shoes away but kid #2 does it without being reminded. Parenting is not a one-size fits all and that means you will always have to be learning new skills.
Stages
Every. Stage. Is. Hard. When they are infants you can’t wait for them to sleep through the night, to sit up, to use the bathroom, to unbuckle their carseat, etc. But then you hit the tween years and you suddenly hope that they talk to you, that they are making good choices when they are with their friends, that their new obsession with black nail polish and eye liner is a phase. My sister told me once that parenting goes from being physically hard to emotionally hard and truer words have never been spoken.
Love
This is the best news. Love really is enough. My mother-in-law signs all of her emails with “children grow to be the love they know”. The number of times I have repeated this to myself is innumerable. I have failed A LOT as a parent but at the end of every day I make sure my kids know I love them. I tell them constantly, I hug them and kiss them and tell them that I’m proud of them and acknowledge their successes. I listen to them when I can and apologize when I can’t. Early in my parenting, I called a friend crying that I was really messing this whole thing up and she said, “Are they fed? Are they clothed? Do they have shelter? Are they safe? You have already exceeded 50% of the population”. I do the best I can and figure I will just pay for therapy at the other end, because…
Perfection
You aren’t perfect and neither are your kids. Don’t ever, ever hold that delusion or you will set both you and your kid up for failure. Your kid is amazing but it is best to be honest about your kid’s own shortcomings and realize that some things they will need to sort out on their own. My eldest struggles with social anxiety. I can give her tools but at some point she will need to learn to manage this on her own. My youngest is a night owl — no matter how hard I work to get her on a sleep schedule she is always going to be a night owl. I can’t fix that. That one is on her. And you, you have your own shortcomings and should be willing to acknowledge those to your kid and say you’re sorry. At some point your teenager will turn to you and with a startling awareness say to you, out loud, “You aren’t as perfect as I thought you were” and you will have to look that disappointment in the face and say, “yes, I know”. Best to soften that blow up front.
Recently somebody said to me, “sometimes being an ok parent is enough” and right now, as we emerge from a year of quarantine I’m declaring myself an “ok parent”. A little hubris in parenting goes a long way. I’m a member of the bad parent club and I’m ok with that.
