Anyone who thinks that they can in any way be CLOSE to being the perfect parent…. have a glass of wine, chill out, and FUHGEDDABOUTIT!
As one of the women in the generation that grew up in the ’70s and ’80s (what do they call us? Generation X? The Me Generation? I can’t even remember anymore), we happened into adulthood with many, many pressures, many of which we put on ourselves. First and foremost, we were the first real generation that EXPECTED to have a CAREER outside of the home, for many reasons: We watched some of our female “role models” stay in spoiled marriages because they didn’t have anywhere else to go and couldn’t make a living on their own; we had relatives that lived through the Great Depression, who told us stories of the value of the Almighty Dollar, and that you should always have something in reserve; we grew up just past the liberating ’60s, and women as a whole were realizing that the cultural expectations for women were basically testosterone’s play on “keeping us in place.” As for myself, I grew up on Long Island in a single-parent and mostly female household; it was my mother, my sister, my grandmother and grandfather (poor guy), and my great grandmother (until I was 11). My mother had almost always worked, as had my grandmother (which was an anamoly to her generation). And, since women basically all ran and kept the household going, I grew up knowing nothing else but a female-dominated environment. My father, though VERY old-fashioned and sexist in many ways, felt the sky was the limit for HIS GIRLS (because we were different), which I think was punctuated because we only saw him once a week.
So, out of the gate, I just knew I could DO IT ALL: have a lucrative career, a wonderful equalist husband, and be the PERFECT parent. I wouldn’t have my children see the injustices of the past! I would make sure that they were BROUGHT UP RIGHT! (See my blog “My Parenting and Other Stuff: A Prologue” from 9/25/07.)
Boy, what an idealist I was.
Now you see many, many articles written for this generation — why you DON’T have to be the SuperMom. Many women I knew had failed marriages because they THOUGHT they were getting into a partnership, only to find out that their husband didn’t REALLY think of them as equals, and the rest of the relationship crumbled from there. I mean, “OK, have a career, but you’re still responsible for the kids, the house, and everything on our home schedule.” And that’s continuing to change — you have to remember, it’s largely the household in which the person was brought up, and it takes a few generations to accomplish a real shift in that kind of attitude. We made the shift to career, now the generation right behind us has become much more equal, I think.
I am one of the lucky ones, I think — though I wouldn’t have gotten married if I hadn’t found someone like my husband. He is my partner, 100%. I’ve had a taxing career, and he’s always been at least 50% of taking care of the children. For awhile, I was making twice his yearly salary, and it didn’t bother him (or question his masculinity) one bit. And now, with my own business, I’m taxed even further than I could have possibly imagined (without the salary quite yet), and that’s fine with him, too. But with all of this going on, unfortunately, sometimes it’s the kids that fall through the cracks, as hard as we try.
Now, we are VERY strict parents by today’s standards, don’t get me wrong — my goal as a parent is to make sure my kids understand they are FULLY ACCOUNTABLE for their actions. We teach them about the junk in food, and make sure they eat veggies, fruit and as much organic or natural and unprocessed food as possible; we don’t let them watch TV except for a couple of hours on Sunday morning and an occasional movie that we have to approve (really, the TVs are completely off when they’re awake, otherwise); they are accountable for their actions at home and at school, and get punished if they don’t produce what’s expected of them (no “my kid would never do that” – full investigation BEFORE any opinion is rendered); better yet, we DO things together! And, being Type A as I am, with high pressures on myself to be SUPERMOM, I want our activities to be PERFECT, and I always WANT TO DO THE PERFECT THING.
No such thing.
Now, I’ve been a Mom for 11+ years now, and I can’t even count how many times I just wanted to crawl into a corner and hide because I think I deserve the Big L (for “LoserMom”) on my forehead, such as
- the time my younger daughter, then aged 2, fell in daycare and hurt herself. It took us about 5 hours and dinner to decide hesitantly to go to the ER to get her arm x-rayed as a precaution (because she was using it fine, it was just a little bruised), to find out she had suffered an impact break across both bones in her forearm (really, she WAS USING THE ARM at dinner!!!);
- the time both kids were sick with a cold (ages 6 and 4 at the time) and I decided to share with them the virtues of herbal steam vapor to help clear their stuffy noses, vs. the OTC junk. As I was putting the Pyrex bowl of steaming, boiling hot water onto the table, the seam in the bottom of the bowl just gave out and broke off, resulting in the water gushing off the table and down the side of my (again) younger child, giving her some pretty intense 2nd degree burns on the outside of her left forearm and her left thigh. It STILL turns my stomach to think about that — that was my All-Time Worst Moment As A Mother (and luckily, we were able to get in to her pediatrician, who’s known us and our parenting practices since our oldest was about a year old, so there weren’t any raised eyebrows as to that cause);
- the time we sent our oldest child (then 5) to school with a couple of marks on her arm because they COULD have been just mosquito bites, regardless of the fact that a classmate had been out the previous week with chicken pox (I was on my way off to a business trip and my husband had meetings that day at work that ee couldn’t cancel) – and yes, it turned out to be a mild case of the chicken pox, even though she’d gotten the shot;
- the time I depended on my older child (who was at the time 8 or so) to tell me the correct time while my husband and I were out in the yard doing yardwork and her sister was at a birthday party. Needless to say, that was a failure, because I called up to her and asked what time it was, she read the (analog) clock wrong, and I ended up picking up my other daughter AN HOUR after the party was over (though I’ve always found it a little funny that no one called to find out where we were when we hadn’t shown up);
I could go on and on, but you get the point. Endless times we sent one or the other kid to school with a dose of Advil in them because they had a little fever from a pending ear infection, and one of us was traveling out of town, had “important” meetings that day, or whatever.
The worst are certain dates (or forgetting about them). With so much juggling going on, we WANT to provide our kids with the perfect life, but it’s not always possible when there are 20 things going on at any given time.
Play dates/get togethers? They are rare – because I figure, hey, my kids are in school and/or in daycare a majority of the week, we want them TO OURSELVES when we’re home!!! Additionally, now that I am a small business owner scraping by, no more cleaning people, which means much more mess, and we’d have to find the time to actually CLEAN the house to have people over!
On the other front, quite honestly, there are few parents we’ve met with whom we’d entrust our children, so there are few houses we’re comfortable sending them, even if for a few hours. Heck, our oldest daughter’s (now 11) best friend is a fine child, but the 2 times she’s been to our house, the parent/stepparent dropping her off has never left the car, come in to meet us, etc. And boy, have we heard stories from our daughter (reiterated from what her friend’s told her) about that friend’s home life. So we don’t let her go over there, because we’re SCARED.
Then there’s a good friend of our younger daughter, who is a sweet child, but we know her father was IN JAIL for an extended period of time, God knows for what, and there are a string of men around with her Mom (and we live in a middle- to upper-middle class area!). The one time we let her go over there, it was for a birthday party, and she came home (without any comment from the mother) with a HUGE splinter that took several days to get out or her hand. Now, we know accidents happen, but I spoke with the mother when I picked her up, my daughter had a Band-Aid on her hand, but the mother never mentioned anything about the splinter or that it hadn’t been taken out or anything. STRIKE THAT HOUSE.
So, we try to keep them entertained and do stuff that’s fun to keep them interested in staying here, with the family, and have their friends take part with us, too, if they so choose. This past weekend, we let the two girls each invite one friend to come with us to a Halloween Trail night at a nature park that is (sort of) in the area. So, they made sure to have their costumes ready, they dressed up, we drove them 45 minutes up to the park, and by the time we got up there — 45 minutes after opening — they wouldn’t let us in because they said they’d sold out for the night. SOLD OUT???!!!! AT A PARK???!!! Needless to say, my 9-year-old was in tears, and I felt like we were a BIG LETDOWN to our children and their friends. But, my husband and I went with the flow, and we ended up going to a fun park nearby — miniature golf, go carts, and (best yet) an arcade. In costume and all. Though we had to forego the Halloween Horror House they had going for the holiday time (2 of the kids were a bit skeptical and nervous about it), we ended up spending our time in the arcade, and then got ice cream on the way home. And they all ended up having a really good time.
:::phew::: CRISIS AVERTED. This time. One less thing to add to my list of “LoserMom” moments.
And, upon some introspection, I realized that I think I’ve gotten better at this parental rollercoaster. I think, after 11 years, I’ve finally learned that it’s better to just GO WITH THE FLOW instead of fighting and killing myself over every mistake, inconvenience, or problem. Just laugh, shake it off, and move on.
Like I tell my kids all the time.
