Is it possible that one of the most difficult jobs some of us face in our lives is at home with our children? The ideal of being a “good mother” or “good father” is a reverberating house of mirrors, that starts from the moment conception, or adoption. Decisions about feeding, sleeping, screens, schools, friends, nutrition, and social skills, all come with feedback loops reflecting our goodness, morality, kindness, conscientiousness, and a myriad of other judgments. These expectations come from within, and from friends, family, professionals, and strangers. It is hard to know who to listen to, and how much to value this feedback. These pressures can undermine your connection with your child and rob you of some of the pleasures of the job. At the heart of parenting, it is the feeling of connection with your unique child that can be the greatest informant and ironically make the job easier.
Your unique duo can perhaps feel intimate, yet isolating. At times, like a lifeboat in the dips and swells of the ocean, it is hard to assess if you are contending with an overwhelming crisis, or simply the turbulence of everyday life, raising a child of any age. Within these dips, the long view, and ultimate goals can be out of your emotional purview.
In the pursuit of perfection or perhaps what we may think of as the obligation of being a good parent, it is easy for insecurities and self-doubt to run deep. The more we strive to be a perfect parent, it is possible to become entangled in a labyrinth of our own making, feeling disconnected from our true self; the self we know in other situations.
Assessing the situation is not easy when you are “in it”. Parenting literature casts a wide net of developmental expectations that cannot be fine-tuned to the needs of your unique child, their character structure, and your families’ unique values and demands. When children don’t meet these demands, whether they are external pressures, or imposed by family, the risk of overreacting or underreacting can unsteady your family and keep everyone off balance.
Fear can overdetermine our choices and actions as parents. It can permeate our thoughts about our children in ways we may not even realize. This fear, if left unnoticed, or unchecked, can lead us to create expectations, or make choices that are not in tune with our authentic selves or a reflection of our deepest connections with our children.
Within the weeds of everyday life, it is hard to believe that moments of turbulence will ever end. As pediatricians often tell parents of toddlers…”they won’t go to college in diapers”,
It is hard to trust the developmental process is at work in your child. Trusting that your child will grow, physically, emotionally, morally, and socially, (and actually wants to grow) can feel impossible. Trusting the long game, and the growth process however also involves assessing what are appropriate expectations for your individual child.
Vulnerability, like the first light of dawn, has the power to illuminate our fears and transform them into profound insights and authentic connections. It is through the embrace of vulnerability that we can shed the constraints of fear and forge a new understanding of ourselves as parents.
It is within our power to transform the rocking boat, and form closer relationships with our children and with ourselves along the way. The power to change is ironically inexorable from acceptance of limitation in ourselves, and of our children. This paradox, is essential to transformation. The journey through the everchanging landscape of parenting, involves vulnerability, connection, trust and curiosity.