The Secret to Good Parenting is Lowering Your Expectations to Nothing
There are No Tricks and It’s All Impossible
Parenting requires you to be your best, most patient, kind, introspective, peaceful self in the face of huge fear, uncertainty, and endless demands. Kids will bounce from screaming about their insufficient snacks to tearfully asking why bunnies die in less time than it takes to walk across the kitchen. There’s almost never time to catch your breath, to think, to answer thoughtfully before they’re on to something else. Your head spins chronically. You get used to feeling frantic, feeling wrong, feeling dumb, feeling out of control. Or, if you can get used to those feelings, you do better.
Deep down I think if I were actually a good mom, it wouldn’t all be such a struggle, such a pain, so impossible.
The harder I try to get it right, to be in control, organized, clean, on top of it all, the more I yearn for things to make sense and stay upright, the more it all slaps me down. When I can just flow with it, mold myself into the shapes required, it’s less impossible.
But, rest assured, it’s all still impossible.
A small example of expectations vs. reality of parenting: I bought a plastic stained-glass window project for my daughter to paint when she was smaller. The vision in my mind was this precious moment between us, resulting in an adorable, colorful work of art suction cupped to our front window, forever a reminder of what a fabulous mom I am and what cute kids I’ve made. Of course, in reality, she smashed all the colors together, painted herself and me, and managed to smear black on one corner of the actual project before she got bored, and left to watch TV.
Extrapolate that to everything, always.
At the time, my anxiety stuck in my throat and my stomach rolled. Why couldn’t she just understand that those little plastic ridges mean you paint one color here, and a different color here? Clean your brush in between each color! Oh, Jesus, just clean your brush!!! For the love of- that was not how it was supposed to be. I must be failing. I can’t even have this ONE DAMNED moment I crave. I must be wishing for things that are impossible. Failing. I must be too demanding, or not demanding enough. Failing.
I just wanted this one small thing! And I couldn’t even have that.
I had gone in to it looking for a trophy to my creative, loving, mom-ness…and really, I got it, it just looked nothing like I’d hoped it would. I wanted evidence that all of this hard work was worth it. The constant struggle and strain of parenting, the endless pinging of my anxieties…I just wanted PAINTED PLASTIC PROOF that I’m doing a good job; that I’m a good mom.
Mom-ing enhances my anxiety, because there is ALWAYS something to fret about and to self-loath about- I am constantly letting myself and them down, and that confirms to my anxious self that I suck.
…but I don’t want to marinate in that anymore.
I am learning to take things that I want for me, so that I don’t always feel shorted by this life, this parenting thing. Especially now, when all I do is mom/teach, and there are few successes in other parts of my life, I’m learning to not see my value in the kids in how they act, in how happy they are, how calm, how together and reasonable…they’re not me. They’re their own people.
Looking back, I see that the little art project was all for me. If I looked at it from Anna’s perspective, she was fine. She had fun, or didn’t. Whatever. It was a nothing burger for her. She was safe, she got to squish things between her fingers and make a huge mess, and she got a little one-on-one with her mom, who, even if I was buzzing with anxiety, was there, with her.
We’re all better off if I can keep fluid in my expectations, avoid the dream of perfect, and be comfortable with the reality of ‘fine.’ There are moments of magic, of un-dilluted joy, but they rarely come when I’ve staged them or expect them. They come randomly, when I’m at the end of a long day and one of them snuggles in, sighs, yawns, and says, “I just love you so much,” or “Did you know that Grogu eats frogs?”
I’m learning to take what I can get and to supply the rest for myself. It’s good enough.
