Yesterday morning I was listening to a great podcast interview with a very wise, very credentialed woman who was giving parenting advice. She was talking about the importance of resilience and how our kids need to face disappointment in order to learn how to work through difficult issues in the future. I love this advice. It is how I strive to parent my kids– letting them walk into situations that might be tough and working with them as they handle the fallout. A specific example this woman gave was if your child forgets something at home that they need for school, you shouldn’t bring it to them. They need to learn how to handle that level of “failure” in order to avoid making that mistake in the future and so they can understand that leaving your homework at home is not the end of the world. I was enthusiastically nodding along and remembering times I had done just that with my kids and times I endured that in my own childhood.
And then my kid called from school and asked if I’d bring him something he left at home– his water bottle.
I felt the guilt. Should I bring him what he wanted? Would that be setting him up for a lifetime of an inability to deal with the consequences of his actions? Was he going to be too fragile to handle what life would throw at him? Was I giving him the wrong impression that I would drop everything for his comfort?
I found the water bottle, filled it up, jumped in the car and brought it to him.
My son is the definition of resilience. He’s been through painful situations and he’s a fighter. He’s responsible, successful, a hard worker, and I am so proud of who he is becoming. But he has always struggled with asking for help.
I imagined him there at the school telephone and thought about the steps he had to go through to get there. Talking to a teacher. Admitting he forgot something. Verbalizing his need. Getting permission to make a call. Asking me to help him out. Trusting I would help him if he let me know he needed it. These were big steps for him. He didn’t need a lesson in resilience. He’s had those a thousand times over. What he needed was a lesson in the value of asking for help and letting people around you come through for you.
Parenting is not as simple as we would all love for it to be. My mom has told me a thousand times, “No one has ever written a book on your child.” As much as there are parenting norms, ideals, philosophies, and theories, there isn’t a book on how exactly to raise the specific child in front of me. It takes an incredible amount of discretion and wisdom to handle each parenting moment.
I feel for the moms of little ones. Especially the moms like I was. We read all the books and we internalize their promises and threats. We believe if we follow the right formula, our kids will turn out perfectly. If they throw a fit at the park, it’s because of something we did. If their preschool teacher thinks they have a problem behavior, it’s clearly time to implement a new formula that will work as long as we’re consistent, so now our life revolves around being consistent with it.
Sometimes kids don’t care about our books or formulas or strategies. As someone who loves strategies this is frustrating. I will struggle with the guilt of bringing that water bottle, or I’ll struggle with the guilt of telling him I can’t. There is no scenario where I won’t be questioning my choices or wondering if I’m somehow harming my child.
I mother like there’s going to be a quiz at the end of the chapter. I create a defense for my parenting decisions like there will be a legal challenge down the road. One of my kids (who is not in therapy) will regularly say to me, “I promise I won’t bring this up in therapy.” because he knows sometimes I make parenting decisions with his future therapist in mind. I don’t want to fail these kids. I want them to be successful because of me and not in spite of me.
But there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the problem of being a human child. Some kids need you to tell them, “I told you three times to grab your trumpet on the way out the door. You will just have to do without it today.” and some kids need you to say, “I’ll grab your trumpet and be right there.”
I’ve been watching these young moms make little videos about how to be a perfect parent. They outline all the things they’re doing/not doing/won’t do and all the reasons this will create perfect children or ideal parent/child relationships. I love that optimism. I remember it. And I remember the fear that was just behind it. What if I can’t actually control these kids? What if I do it all “right” and they still don’t turn out the way I hope they will?
The beauty of being an old mom is that I know there’s a lot more freedom in parenting than I once thought. There’s room for rupture and repair. You can get it wrong and still make it right. And while I still love my parenting philosophies, I’m also aware that my kids are not a philosophical project. They are not responsible for proving me right. There’s a level of flexibility I have to have to be the mom they each individually need. It’s not easy, but it’s a learning process that I love.
If I could talk to my young mom self, I would remind her that she doesn’t actually need to have it all figured out right now. She can take some joy in who her kids are today without worrying about what they’re turning into if she isn’t micromanaging all their behaviors and needs. I would tell her that she might want to be careful about telling people she’d never bring that water bottle to school because someday that parenting rule might be really important to break.
No one has written the book on my child. Except me. I’m writing it every day and I hope each chapter builds a story of how loved my child is, how I did my best, and how we made it through together.