There is a lot of parenting advice floating out there in Internet Land. Some of it is really helpful, some of it is garbage, and sometimes it’s hard to know the difference. I struggle with some of the beautiful quotes plastered over pictures of mothers rocking sleeping babies that somehow manage to both inspire and make me feel incredibly guilty. This is one of those quotes:

“Listen earnestly to anything [your children] want to tell you, no matter what. If you don’t listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won’t tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.”

― Catherine M. Wallace

Photo by Love Equals Photography

For some moms, maybe this is a really helpful truth that keeps you focused on the main thing. If that’s you, then bless you and just skip this post. But that is not how this quote strikes me. This quote makes me crazy. It is this little nugget that lodges in the back of my brain and makes me feel like a failure every single day when I choose not to listen earnestly and eagerly to the five year-old’s lengthy thoughts on if Power Rangers are real. Just incase there are other moms like me who need to extract that guilt-inducing brain nugget so they can get on with being the best moms they can be, I want to share why I’m not buying this particular parenting philosophy.

In some ways it gives me a similar hopeless feeling to the one I get when I hear that children should never cry. Maybe I can keep one kid from crying most of the time, but once you have a baby and a toddler, you’re likely going to have somebody crying a good chunk of your day. You can’t meet all the needs all at the same time. In the same way, how am I going to eagerly, earnestly listen to all the crazy ridiculousness my kids want to talk about all day all at the same time?

This problem came to a head for me with meal times. After taking an hour to prepare a meal only to have it met with a barrage of criticism from four tiny food critics, I was done. I said the three words no parent is ever supposed to say:  I don’t care. You don’t like how broccoli smells? I don’t care. You like macaroni noodles but rotini noodles are disgusting? I don’t care. You liked pears yesterday, but today they make you want to gag? I don’t care. And all these helpful thoughts come from children who lick the legos, chew their pencils, and eat what they find in their nose. I told my kids that unless I asked for their opinion on a meal, they can just assume that I don’t care. They can eat it or not, but I don’t need their feedback. It was a freeing moment for me and shockingly enough, the children didn’t wither away. Now they are much better about understanding that I’m not forcing them to eat anything, and if they don’t like something, they don’t have to make a big deal out of it. It has become a saying in our house:

Everything you say needs to be true, but not everything that’s true needs to be said. 

There are lots of things that your mom will care about, but there are also some things that she doesn’t. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about you or your problems. But I think when we treat all the minutia in our kids’ lives with the same gravitas as the actual major stuff, we create kids with First World Problems. They have the inability to distinguish what really matters from what is just an annoyance. I think we can also increase their level of panic or distress by treating minor stuff like it’s majorly important.

I have learned that I need to teach my kids that Mommy is a person, too. Mommy sometimes needs quiet to think her own thoughts. Mommy occasionally needs to sleep. Sometimes Mommy wants to listen to a sermon or really likes this song on the radio. It’s okay for me to be a person and for me to teach my kids to treat me with respect. If the expectation is that I should drop whatever it is I’m doing to listen to whatever it is my kids want to say, I don’t think I’m teaching them to value other people and their time. In fact, I think I’m making them selfish and self-centered. There are appropriate times to have those conversations, but not every minute of the day is your personal talk show.

I know what I’m saying could be taken to unhealthy extremes. I am not the parent lazing on the couch who says, “Not now. I’m trying to watch my shows.” when my kids come over to talk to me. I don’t tell them to walk it off when things are tough. I set aside intentional time to ask them what’s going on in their lives. Every night at dinner (which we eat as a family around the table) we talk about how our days went. I love having one-on-one time with each of my kids to hear what’s on their hearts. And any time Big Feelings come to the surface, we talk about those things.

I just feel like moms don’t need one more thing to feel bad about. I imagine in context maybe this guilt-inducing quote made more sense. Maybe the sentence after it said, “Except when the kid is all worked up about the fact that they like ketchup but don’t like that it’s made from tomatoes. Nobody needs to listen earnestly and eagerly to that mess.” I’m guessing the author knew that there’s “little stuff” that we need to hear and validate and then there’s the stuff that truly isn’t important and we need to coach our kids to let go of, but I’m a black and white person and this quote leaves little room for personal discretion.

So much of this comes down to knowing your own kids. Take the time to hear their hearts in an undistracted fashion. And it’s okay to tell your child, “Now is not a good time, but we can talk about this later” but then you have to actually REMEMBER to talk to them about it later. Ultimately, we need to cultivate an unquestionable understanding in our children that we care about them. We love them. They are important. I fully believe it’s possible to do that while still teaching them appropriate self-control, boundaries and conversation skills.

(And if you occasionally tell them “I don’t care”, I won’t judge.)