Revelations

By Beck

On the weekend, I was complaining in the evening – after the kids were tucked away, sleeping in their small beds – complaining about their rotten behaviour, about how one of them had hurt my feelings at a family gathering. I felt raw and hurt and distant from my kid, muttering dark forecasts for the upcoming teen years and my husband said something that I think might have changed my life forEVER.

You don’t get to let hurt feelings make your parenting decisions, he reminded me, and your children aren’t here to take care of your feelings, to make up for what you lack. You aren’t just a good parent when you feel like it, when the whim hits you – you are a good parent all the time, even when your kid is being a big embarrassing jerk. You are not allowed to let your child’s behaviour affect your relationship with them, your love for them, ever.

ARGH. Are you saying I have to keep TRYING? Wasn’t childbirth BAD ENOUGH? APPARENTLY NOT.

And once I’d stopped sulking, I realized that of course he was right. As much as I’d wanted to have my hand held and my hurt feelings comforted, what I actually needed was a reminder that my kids aren’t here to make me feel good about myself, no matter how tempting that illusion might be for the first few months of parenthood, when babies are small and cute and have to wear whatever goofy outfits we put them in.

Get older, though, let a few years of school settle in, let the child become obviously their own human being, and suddenly you see lots of parents’ check out, parents who are there only physically. The family temperature suddenly chills over – kids eat microwaved food by themselves in front of the tv, kids leave for school with no good-byes in the morning, kids bike miles away in the distance with no one to care. And even while I think that kind of parenting is just disgusting, I was subtly starting to walk down that road myself, vacating myself from real parenting the second that the kids weren’t so great for my ego.

You don’t let your hurt feelings make your parenting decisions for you.

Children have only their parents to love them unconditionally, to hold their well-being above their own, and it is hard, grown-up work to love them fiercely while knowing that they are growing up all the time, that this path will lead to that beloved child outgrowing their childhood bed, their childhood home, their parent’s sheltering wings. Just as I was writing this, in the darkness of the sleeping house, my oldest child came downstairs and flitted by me, kissing my forehead as she passed, oh hold me close and oh let me go so painfully intertwined and although I thought that being in grueling labour for 20 hours was the hardest thing I’d ever have to do, it turned out just to be a warning, a signal flare.

Beck blogs at Frog And Toad Are Still Friends.