The Way Parenting Should Be
It shouldn’t be this hard.
This isn’t how it was supposed to be.
What did we do wrong?
These are thoughts I have had often as a parent of children with emotional and behavioral challenges, very difficult sibling relationships, an alphabet soup of diagnoses and a real knack for having stressful short-term medical mysteries. In a nutshell - as a parent of children who bear little resemblance to the children I thought my partner and I would have…or more accurately that I thought we should have.
The Parenting Job Description
What I’ve noticed through years of my own parent development is that these thoughts fuel RESISTANCE to unchangeable aspects of my reality. It’s like walking up a down escalator - exhausting, frustrating, overwhelming and at times hopeless. Thoughts that fuel resistance bring down my energy and mood and don’t serve me or my family well.
So where do these thoughts come from and why the heck do I think them so easily and so often - almost by default? For me, they’re based in an inaccurate understanding of the job description of being a parent. The reality is…
I “signed up” to be a parent.
There was nothing in that job description that promised easy children, healthy children, compliant children, children who get along, children who can participate just like their peers, children who will lead long lives, children who sleep well and eat well and speak well and walk well, children with many friends, children who don’t get picked on, children who grow up to be independent.
I signed up to have children and to love them unconditionally.
And I signed up for any parenting possibility.
Where along the way did I add all these assumptions about what type of children I should have? I have a hunch the belief that I was entitled to a certain type of child or parenting experience really took hold for me during pregnancy and intensified through the baby and toddler years. And it probably didn’t help that I’m an anxious person with a high drive for control and predictability.
There were prenatal tests to make sure my babies didn’t have health or physical challenges. There were hours spent in birthing classes to prepare for the births I wanted. There were ways that I played with my little ones to encourage development. There were methods I followed to support sleep and speech and healthy eating. These things are valuable and important and I don’t regret them, but I do regret the degree to which I became obsessed with ensuring “normal.” Normal felt like the way it should be - normal kids with normal development and a normal family life. I was terrified of not having that. I recognize now that I even felt cheated when I didn’t get “normal” in the metaphorical parenting lottery. Over and over I thought:
This isn’t how it was supposed to be.
But it is. It’s exactly how it was supposed to be. I don’t mean that in a religious way - just that I signed up for the unknown. The more I remind myself of the actual job description of becoming a parent and specifically what is NOT promised in that job description (ease and control and predictability), the more the resistance yields to acceptance. I stop huffing and puffing up the down escalator and use my mental and physical energy to love my kids - my not normal but exactly who they’re supposed to be children. Unconditionally.
Reflection:
Are there any parts of your parenting experience that feel like they “shouldn’t be this way?”
Where might a fear of “not normal” be sneaking into your thoughts about your child?
Do you have examples in your life of parents who truly make the best of their unexpected realities - even heartbreaking parenting experiences?
