Growing Something Beautiful

Growing Something Beautiful

We recently attended a kindergarten info session. We were in the 5% minority of people in attendance who brought children. As other parents dragged the meeting on past its scheduled end time by interrogating the teachers and asking lengthy questions about the tenure of the faculty and the extracurricular activities available to kindergartners (yes, kindergartners) our children grew restless. When my attempts to occupy Ellen with my phone failed and she announced “I’m not being quiet right now!” in a high pitched voice, I took her to the back of the room. I suddenly felt guilty for bringing my offspring (to a school for children) and suspected there were several people giving me the stink-eye for not leaving our kids home with our nonexistent nanny.  Maybe I’m imagining it, but I feel like other parents watch me a lot. It makes me feel self-conscious about my daughter who doesn’t have an inkling what an inside voice is and my son who is stubbornly particular. But maybe it isn’t just me. Maybe we’re all just watching each other and hoping no one suspects the truth: that most of the time we don’t have a clue what we’re doing.
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For the most part, I avoid anything that might be categorized as parenting advice, mostly for anger management issues, but every once in awhile something makes its way to me. The other day Noel emailed me a link to an article titled “Six Tips on Disciplining Children from an Experienced Teacher,” prefacing it with the remark, “I’m not sure if this is good advice or if it angers me.” Noel is not as well acquainted with the world of parenting articles where there is an overabundance of advice and general judginess and I was curious what had upset him. I clicked through and quickly saw what he meant. The tips were good and made me think of ways I could improve as a parent, but the author’s matter of fact examples of how she implemented them with her Stepford children was maddening. The calm interactions they had that always ended in the kids doing exactly what she wanted were almost incomprehensible to me and probably any other person who’s ever spent anytime with children or teens. Maybe this woman really has the magic touch or her children are genetically engineered, but it just felt like there was something missing or that there was a truth that hadn’t been fully told. 
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Cooper’s preschool sent home a flier for a parenting class put on by a community organization. It had a picture of a boy with crazed eyes riding a Hobby Horse and read, “A Parenting Manual: Because kids don’t come with instructions” and promised that the class would answer your toughest parenting questions. I rolled my eyes and decided it was best I not go and poison all the optimistic parents who were so earnestly looking for the clear cut answers to how to raise children. In the Ted Talk “For Parents Happiness is a High Bar,” Jennifer Senior asks, “Why is it that raising our children is associated with so much anguish and so much confusion? Why is it that we are at sixes and sevens about the one thing human beings have been doing successfully for millennia, long before parenting message boards and peer-reviewed studies came along?”  I think about that sometimes and vow to relax and just parent from the heart, but before the thought is hardly finished my brain starts to panic asking, “What exactly does that mean?” I’m still working on figuring it out, but the words Senior spoke to her son the day he was born have at least given me a mantra I think I can live by. As she held him in her arms for the first time she whispered in his ear, “I will try so hard not to hurt you.”
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I always hesitate to give parenting advice and have no intentions of ever calling myself an expert. When my sister calls me in hopes of gleaning some wisdom from me on how to raise her growing son my heart always breaks because I know I probably don’t have the answers. I hardly know what to do to make her son sleep anymore than I knew how to make my son sleep, so I blather out suggestions of things I tried or read about or heard other people did and then tell her the only thing on the subject I know with certainty, “I know this hard, but you’re doing a good job, really.”
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One time I was talking to my mom about gardening. My mother is a Master Gardener and I was trying to express to her how unknowledgeable I felt about our yard. “It just feels like this huge experiment,” I said, “I just keep throwing things out there and hoping something works.” I waited, expecting her to give advice about what I should do differently, but instead she simply reassured me, “That’s gardening.” I think parenting is a lot like that; a huge experiment that even the “experts” haven’t completely figured out. We’re all just out there working hard and wiping the sweat off our brows as we tend what’s growing on our plots of land. Despite our best efforts though, there will always be a neighbor that doesn’t like our methods of landscaping and maybe we won’t like theirs, but we can’t let that drag us down because the truth is we’re all just trying our best to make something beautiful.

5 thoughts on “Growing Something Beautiful

  1. These thoughts express so well how most parents feel about our grand family endeavors. I typically shy away from parenting advice articles because it’s usually so absolute, and we all know there are few absolutes when it comes to how to raise a family. The one constant I can say that actually helps me is thinking about (and trying to implement) how God parents me. (I don’t often say that outright, because I don’t want to sound pious or self-righteous.) But it’s honestly the only yardstick that sits right with me in the ocean of parenting columns and manuals. We can garner such great connection with each other parents, and yet parenting is so often twisted to divide and distort our relationship with others. Thanks for this post–you gave me plenty to think about!

  2. Thanks for being real and vulnerable. It strikes a chord within my mommy heart because this very thing has been on my mind lately. I’ve finally given myself permission to take all the advice with a grain of salt (or a cup, depending on the source) and just go with my gut, knowing all I can do is my best with what (and who) I have. After all, I know I love my kids more than anyone else on this earth and I also want them to grow up to be upstanding citizens more than anyone else on this earth, so that counts for something. The other day had a friend tell me she didn’t allow her little boy to throw tantrums, as she looked at Sam with a disapproving glare and told him to stop whining. If only it were that simple right?! If I could just say “I don’t deal with tantrums” and poof, he stopped. -Sign me up for that 😉 I just smiled (thinking just wait…) and went on my way dealing with the situation the way that works for us. I likewise used to have all sorts of opinions that involved the parameters of what my kids would and would not do because of how awesome at parenting I would be. (This was all based on other people’s parenting and children of course.) Then I had kids… I’m glad that being a mom has made me a lot less judgmental of other parents and kids. We all need compassion and support in this beautiful mess of parenting. So now I find I don’t have many opinions about other people’s children/parenting as long as my kids and their kids are safe. Other than that it’s like, I have more than enough to deal with at the moment, so you take care of yours and I’ll worry about mine, and we’ll both do what works for us 🙂 But I’m always up for commiserating with other parents who don’t have Stepford children 😉 PS Andrew doesn’t get inside voices either. Once he asked Blake if he had a booger in his nose right during the Sacrament… We are officially ‘those’ people with ‘those’ kids 😉

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