It’s a beautiful day outside today. I don’t mean “beautiful” like the perfect temperature for having a picnic, I mean, literally beautiful- snow is thick and heavy on the ground, the sun is shining and the sky is perfectly blue. It’s the kind of day that makes even photography idiots like me wish we could spend some time capturing the dog’s footprints in the snow or how the sun reflects off the icicles on the front porch. Instead, I’m capturing blurry images of my adorable kids enjoying their usual backyard converted into a winter wonderland. And I see them each doing what they do best.
My boys- wrestling, pushing snow in each other’s faces, running, throwing themselves into the drifts.
My girl- filling a bucket with snow and then emptying the bucket out in the imaginary flower garden she’s created over and over again.
Surely not all kids identify with the gender stereotypes as much as mine do (and only at times- my girl can be SO rough and tumble and nobody plays with the dolls except one of my sons), but seeing their differences in this new snowy situation reminded me of what it felt like to be a new mom with an active little boy on my hands.
And when I say active, I mean ACTIVE. His pediatrician calls him “unusually exuberant”, which I find to be a very apt description of him. Since his very smallest days he has bounced off the walls (I’m not speaking figuratively), rolled through the grocery store (again, not figuratively), and shouted anything that came into his mind. And I thought it must have something to do with how I was raising him.
My middle son has his own set of quirks. Some of them adorable, some of them are of the make-you-want-to-pull-your-hair-out variety. These uniquenesses have had us googling, and asking questions of his pediatrician, and having evaluations done in the hope of getting him some answers and some appropriate help. And again, I was pretty sure it had something to do with how we’re raising him.
My kids have each been so different with their own strengths and weaknesses. I’m guessing that may even be amplified in our family where our four children each have a different set of biological parents. They came hard-wired with their own tendencies and predispositions that have been a mystery I’ve enjoyed unraveling over the years. In some ways they are like little Christmas presents I just get to keep unwrapping as I learn what makes them tick and what they have to offer the world. And what a beautiful process that has been!
Along with being a journey for me of learning my children and their personalities, it has also given me a new grace for the moms around me. It is SO incredibly easy to learn what works for your first child (rewards, consequences, schedules, preferences) and assume that would work for every other child. It can makes us pretty judgmental as moms. For some of us, our second child provides a much needed humbling as we come to question everything we thought we knew. For other moms, a similarly wired second child may only confirm that you have discovered the secret to all things parenting. A secret that must be shared.
I feel this every time a mom asks a parenting question in a public setting. We may have answers that have worked for our kids, but that’s no guarantee it will meet the need of the mom standing in front of us. If our solutions don’t work for her, she can feel like she’s failing in her most important role. She may have no idea that she isn’t doing anything wrong, just still in the learning process of what will work for her child.
So what’s a mom to do? Do you not ask others for advice? If a fellow mom is struggling, do we let her flounder without offering our hard-earned wisdom? No no no no no.
I have been so blessed by the parenting wisdom offered to me by those who have walked this road before. Whether that’s through parenting books, articles, blogs, or my mom (and dad!) friends. I am just one person and sometimes solutions won’t occur to me that other parents have naturally stumbled across. We do ourselves no favors by struggling in silence and pretending to hold it all together. The next mom you ask might be the one who has raised a child like yours and has the words to comfort and help. It is humbling to admit you don’t have it all figured out or that you have a challenging child, but I’m willing to risk being humiliated in order to find the answers I need.
And when it comes to offering advice- we MUST be a help to the moms around us (it’s even in the Bible, people), but we’ve got to be sure our hearts are in the right place. It takes a gentleness and a respect for the woman and child we’re talking about. We need to realize the solutions that worked for us may not be universal. I also have to remember (this is a tough one for me) that different homes are comfortable with different dynamics. I love schedules and routine so my solutions may revolve around those kinds of answers. For the mama who loves flexibility and being spontaneous, I may be speaking a foreign language.
My daughter has been such an “easy” child at this point, my husband once said, “Can you imagine if she were our only child? We’d think we had this all figured out.” At one particularly challenging point with one of our boys my husband also said, “Can you imagine if this was our only child? We’d think we were failures.” To some extent our kids do represent us- our values, our parenting style, our habits- but they are also their own little people. We need to respect their differences and be especially supportive of mama friends who are in the trenches with a struggling child.
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