Parenting is awesomely hard
Parenting is cutting the ends off of snow peas before giving them to your son. Because, while he could peel them off himself, you want him to enjoy the whole experience of eating it.
It’s cleaning up those cut ends later in the evening, after he’s asleep lulled there by a meditation you recite, while you tidy the house.
It’s writing this, sitting in a training session you developed and implemented, because it is in your brain and you need to release it.
It’s navigating feeding your daughter easily while feeding her what she wants, at 7am when she needs to be getting out of the house but is dead-set on yogurt for breakfast. It’s getting her to get dressed before eating, so that’s at least done. Talking to her as she lays on the floor, kicking her feet against the fridge you’ve just shut because she can’t have yogurt now.
It’s putting on a movie, so you can spin for 45 minutes on a Sunday afternoon, because you know taking care of yourself enables you to take better care of your family.
Parenting is recognizing when I’m overwhelmed with expectations and letting go. It is letting your 4 year old wander nearby in the grocery store so you can bag groceries without her climbing out of the cart. It is letting her 8 year old brother take her in to the bathroom so you can check out. And then standing next to the bathroom door questioning if you made the right choice.
Parenting is bringing your son to the bus stop and pulling away as he gets ready to climb on to the bus so you make your train. And then questioning your decision the whole way. It is looking at the clock at 9 and knowing, ok if he hadn’t made it to school they would have called by now. Even though you saw him at the bus door ready to get on. It is asking him about it later and having him brush it off, “I could go out to the bus stop by myself now.”
Parenting is checking on your kids before you go to bed every night. And while doing so, putting their laundry away. And thinking to yourself as you do, “I wonder if they think a laundry fairy does this.”
Parenting is forgetting to send your kid a list and money for the Gift Day at school and instead of feeling guilt, feeling pride that he used the $2 he had in his pocket to buy a board game he wanted.
Parenting is so much more than you can recognize and realize before you become one. It is so much more than you know even as you’re in the midst of it. And it is hard.
Parenting is hard.
It is beautiful and life changing.
It is overwhelming and scary.
It is exciting and fun.
Parenting is recognizing that you have more growing and evolving to do. It is healing your own childhood wounds, and we all have them regardless of how “good” our childhood was. It is calling attention to the pieces of you that make parenting harder and the pieces of you that enable you to parent productively.
Parenting is all these small things, and also the best lesson in self-reflection I’ve ever had.
And as a parent, if I don’t shift, change and evolve every day I’m not doing it right. Because really, parenting is about your child and not about you. And when you get that, it opens up a whole new world of possibility for you and your child(ren).
Because that means you have to be your best self which means taking care of yourself.
And you have to be learning and growing as your child does.
And you have to be letting go of your own expectations around what society wants you to be and be responsive and reflective about what your kids need you to be.
So yeah. Parenting is hard. But awesomely so if you let it be. Because you are a parent, and you can do hard things.
