a parenting thought

8/23/22

 My parenting journey has been anything but "normal".  

Sometimes I am envious of mothers who have a linear parenting story.  Who, if they want to, have a private parenting story.  

My story, our family's story, is anything but linear.  And in some sense, is anything but private.

I am suspicious, though, what we are experiencing as a family of eight is not unlike what you are experiencing.  We just have a few dynamics making the experience extra interesting. 

A trend I am seeing on social media is one of holding boundaries with our parents or holding our parents accountable for how they hurt us, or how they failed us.  I am about a decade older than most who are exploring this wild territory and I have some thoughts.  

Each generation, hopefully, does better than the one before it.  Because my parents evolved, I was not raised the way they were.  Because I have evolved, I am not raising children the way I was raised.  

However.  The pendulum seems to be swinging too far right now.  

As a bonus parent to two teen (ish) girls, I am seeing this trend promote blurry lines between entitlement and respect.  

As a bonus parent and a bio parent and a mental health professional, I am seeing this desire to have make sure our children are "heard" and "validated" turn into a lack of guidance and correction.  

Gentle parenting turning into little more than permissive parenting. 

I keep thinking about what my goals are for parenting and for my children.  I want them to know how to communicate.  But I also want them to be empathetic.

And just because someone is a child or just because someone is a parent doesn't mean they automatically are wrong.  This is the balance we are trying to find.

I have to do better about learning what really is a threat and what isn't.

And my children have to learn ... well.  How to be kinder.  

on being a parent

 Parenting thought of the day.

 If I were to replay the tape to figure out where most of our conflict originated, I think (I know. I’ve thought about this extensively) at the core I’d find a lack of mindfulness.

Six kids are screaming/arguing/roughhousing. Tv is blaring. Dog is barking. Someone’s hungry. Something just broke. No one can find the remote. No one has clean socks. Someone spilled water… or someone peed. Someone looked at the other wrong. There’s a sharpie lid.  Somewhere, a tiktok video is playing.

 In that chaotic moment, a statement is made or missed, a snide remark, or a need is expressed in a round about way. Mine. His. Theirs. And in the whirlwind of Big Family Life the ability to “pause” seems to be lost.

 Remember when our moms said, “it’s so loud I can’t think”?

When an accusation was made and in the heat of the moment, I took it personally. But if I’d taken a pause, I probably could have seen it as a fight, which didn’t need to be picked.

When a rule is broken. When, in complex dynamics, a parent is pitted against the other.  When eyes are rolled or siblings argue.  

In my trauma trainings I‘ve learned about “perceived threat” and the dominance game. And the remedies to handling those “knee jerk” reactions, which happen because our brains have been conditioned by past events, which settled into past painful memories.

I keep thinking , what is wrong with me that I have THIS much work to do? 

Can you possibly be a good mother and have to work this hard at it?  Some days I want to review tape.

The core belief, slowly being exposed, is that I have too much work to do.  You can't be a good mother and be this bad.  

There are days I can't quite tease apart what is hard because raising kids is hard, and what is hard because our family is blended.  For example, the days they don't listen or roll their eyes or a decision gets undermined or maybe I made a mistake, but it seems no one has any grace for me.  

Do we not have grace for moms?  Or is it just step moms and bonus moms who are held to such high standards?  

Would I take it so personally if our blended family dynamic was more peaceful and mature and trustworthy?  Is the struggle here because there are actual grown ups in our lives who don't want us to do well?  

I've been desperately trying to learn.  

The answer really is mindfulness.  The answer is showing up as the mother I want to be, rather than the mother I've been.  For us, specifically, the answer is all the work we can possibly do on our trauma.  

There is an answer in rituals as well.  This is what feels like so much work.  Back to the core belief that if this was right and we were good at this, we wouldn't need to do so much damn work.  But we do.  We need night time rituals to get ready for morning rituals and we need meal schedules and routines.  We need more water and more sunlight and more vegetables and less screens. There are too many moving parts to not have theses strategies in play. 

But even when I get that part right, I am burdened by the memory of everything I got wrong.

Just today I was flooded with guilt over an area I have grossly neglected.  Weighed down by the realization of how hard it is to like myself, let alone expect my family to like me.

I originally started this post in August of last year.  Cue my age old guilt trip of how long it takes me to learn. Today, when half the kids are home sick and I'm using naptime to write instead of clean, I really hope the effort of learning counts for something.