Standing just far enough away that your toddlers feels independent, just close enough to catch them should they tumble off the playset.
Sitting quietly next to your weeping child.
Researching pediatric mood disorders and scanning your family tree for clues about your teenager’s intense ups and downs.
Packing a bag with pencils and a notepad for the inevitable waiting time.
Trying to learn new math so you can help with homework.
Plotting out the best time to call the pediatrician at just the right moment, not overreacting, but also not missing important diagnostic clues.
Explaining to your parents why baby isn’t ready for solids
Answering your 400th “Moommmmmmaaaa” in the last 28 minutes.
Noticing the panic in your teens eyes and quietly joining them in the search for their lost charger (even though you warned against this very thing this morning).
Caring for your aging parents without sharing the worries.
Coaching your child through relationship drama.
Icing your knees after spending the afternoon climbing through tunnels playing make-believe.
Working to control your own breathing when croup makes your baby’s chest sink in.
Singing that one song just one more time.
Berating yourself for losing your temper last night.
I see you. I know it’s harder than you expected, it’s rougher than you let on, sometimes even to yourself. There are moments you believe with all your heart that you can’t go on, not another step. The exhaustion is too great, the job too lonely.
When you look around, you see parents who remembered their diapers *and* wipes, who didn’t get poop on their sleeve while changing their kiddo. You see parents who stay patient with unruly four year olds, parents with wildly successful outside careers, or parents exuding confidence about their decision to focus on caregiving for the time being. You see parents who pull perfectly dehydrated fruits and vegetables from their beeswax wrappers at snack time. You see couples who have figured out how to manage equal labor.
You see parents of teenagers interested in giving back to society, participating in volunteer events in between studying for AP exams. Parents of teenagers who enjoy sharing their struggles, which are mainly mild relational questions, with them. You see parents of school age kids who just love to read, and want to save the world.
You don’t see their mess. You don’t see their struggle. It seems like you might have a bigger mess than they do. You see such a different picture from your own mess that you retreat. What if someone saw your mess? What if your struggle were obvious? What if someone found out that some days you don’t even want to parent?
When the reflections of parenting you see every day contrast so vividly with your own world, it’s easy to panic. What if parenting really is that easy to everyone else? You start to hide the hard parts, the messy parts. You show only the good stuff. When you contort to hide the messiness, you actually lose connections because you can’t be authentic. In your efforts to regain connection, you show more good stuff, and so on and so forth until you feel lost, because the other parents in your life think you’re the one who remembers the diapers and the wipes, who is always patient with unruly four year olds, and what if they find out you’re not that parent?
We are steeped in societal mythos around parenthood—the right parent is patient, competent, loving, organized, and fun– always. Slide into the wrong parenting patterns and your child will grow up wrong.
Parenthood, replete with patriarchal expectations, is an easy place to get lost, and you can only get found again if you let yourself be seen. Join us as we explore the mess of parenting through a lens of relational-cultural theory.
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