“Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.”
Quote by: W.E.B. DuBois
Have you ever had one of these moments? You’re merrily riding your float down the stream of familiarity, when a sudden chronological jolt occurs and you know that circumstances in your life have changed irrevocably. It happened to me this afternoon when sitting at a local cafe with my lovely daughter Sasha, who entered my life a short 13 years ago.
A seemingly short moment ago she was snuggly fitting into the crease of my arm, a little baby. It took a little while until I could get my head around the fact that I’m a mother and responsible for a small precious life. Now that I’m happily living in the groove of it, I’m suddenly made aware that my daughter has outgrown her childhood years. It’s time to look at re-orienting, re-inventing ourselves and our relationships with each other.
I’m amazed at what a unique, beautiful, accomplished and confident young woman she has become, and for the most part I have to say: All-by-herself! Looking back at my mothering I think I worried too much and tried too hard. Had I known better I would have saved myself a few grey hairs, but I did the best that I could with the tools that I had at my disposal back then, so I’m being kind to myself and accept the fact that I can’t turn back the clock.
Where to go from here? I’m glad that I get the opportunity to reflect on this shift in our relationship. Time is fickle, it can pass us by on tiptoes, preventing us from noticing how things have changed. We like routine and feel comforted by known quantities. Growing up, I’ve seen many parents who got stuck in the caretaker/educator role indefinitely, being overly involved in their children’s lives, to sometimes detrimental effects. The teenagers got rebellious in an attempt to obtain their independence. Some others failed to become self reliant and resilient adults (myself included), struggling with anxiety and staying stuck in enmeshment with their parents.
Life is one giant learning curve, we sometimes tend to forget this. Every now and again I feel humbled by the realization, that we have never really ‘figured it out’. As Ryan Holiday expresses it poignantly with the title of his book “The Obstacle Is the Way”. I came to accept that I won’t be a perfect parent and that it’s ok. Now that I know how to raise a toddler I’m dealing with an adolescent, which means I will know how to do it after she’s left home. Sasha is an only child. It means I won’t get a do over to apply my new found skills but our children are as much our teachers as we are theirs. That’s what I have come to understand. This knowledge also enables us to be forgiving towards the mistakes our own parents have made raising us.
I will do my best to honor my daughter’s individuality, pull back so she can make her own mistakes and support her when she needs it. I will look at her not as my own but as an individual in her own right. Along the way I will mess up royally but I believe that eventually we’ll be able to let go of the dual nature of our relationship as teacher/student or student/teacher and remain supportive friends who love and respect each other.
I would like to tell my younger mom-self to relax and have some faith. I wish someone had told me, that as a parent, I wouldn’t have to put all my focus on my child, that self care was equally important and would benefit the whole family. Letting go of ‘mom-guilt’ (doing too much but at the same time never enough) and working on becoming the best version of ‘myself’ was the key. Everything else would follow naturally. It took me over a decade to fully understand this and to put it into action. Sometimes I wish I could turn back the clock and start over so Sasha could benefit from the life experience I have today. At the same time I now fully realize that as much as I taught her about life, she returned a thousandfold. Without her entering my life at the time she did I wouldn’t have received same opportunities for growth. Knowing this has allowed me to forgive myself for the numerous mistakes I’ve made. Mom-guilt is nothing to hold on to. Ingrained in me was the picture of the good mother as a selfless martyr. ‘Take care of everybody but yourself’ was the example of motherhood I grew up with. In the process I had to forgive my own mother for herself not being aware. It took a long time for me to realize that the best mom is a happy mom and to allow myself to be it. It’s so important for us to look after ourselves. It might seem selfish at first, but it’s absolutely essential. How are we supposed to give love and support to our offspring when we cannot love ourselves?
When Sasha was a baby I read all the parenting books I could get my hands on. It makes me think back at the struggles and doubts I had about myself as a mother. All the expectations I had on myself. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one, but I felt like I was. We need to start sharing our imperfections, our missteps our fears. Why do we all think we have to keep it ‘together’ to portray a picture perfect life? I’ve been doing this for so long because it’s what you do, but it’s just running a societal program of norms. It makes us feel inadequate and we feel like we need ‘more’, we need ‘better’. People struggle behind closed doors but if we did it out in the open, we would all realize that it’s ok not to have a clue what we’re doing and our difference from each other makes us all alike. There’s no homogenous norm. Every person is entirely unique in this world and therefore precious, there’s no right or wrong way of being or doing things.
So much time and effort is spent trying to ‘educate’ our kids in the ‘right way’.We want them to be happy, strong, confident. But do we mistake success with happiness? Is our expectation of our chilren’s happiness serving to soothe our own anxieties? Who is ill equipped to handle the occasional disappointment or hurt, them or us? We can’t stop handing out well meaning advice and suggestions, every so often we might even indoctrinate but we know intrinsically that life experiences can’t be taught, however hard we try to remove the stumbling blocks in our children’s lives. Wrapping them in cotton wool won’t allow them to grow healthy resilience. We’re overwhelming them and ourselves with all our fussing.
We all want the best for our kids, but why are we overthinking to the point of pulling our hair out? We are at loggerheads with them over homework (worrying about ‘not good enoughs’), electronic devices (worrying about bullying and predators), dirty socks or messy rooms (worrying about self sufficiency), tension can build up and we might lose our cool (which we later regret). Trying to keep up with a heavily packed schedule driving them from one enrichment program to the next, squeezing in a few work emails whilst picking up dinner on the way… how is that productive, is this the best we can do for our child?Sometimes we forget the most basic and easiest thing in the world: Show up and be present! When we’re in such a rush to do everything perfectly we forget to just be and spend some good, undisturbed quality time with our offspring. I’ve decided to slow down, to stop worrying about achievement, to stop comparing myself and my child to others.
The best thing I ever did was to free up some time to dedicate solely to my child, to listen intently to whatever she had to share, to give her my full attention and validate her opinions without judgement (not always easy). Quality over quantity. I believe 5min genuine interest and participation is more beneficial than being physically present all day but emotionally unavailable. It’s not easy as a parent to refrain from suggesting and teaching to alleviate our own anxiety about the future. We have to sit with it. It’s us who have a hard time letting go of control, letting them learn their own lessons, but I truly believe that just being there with love and support and striving to be the best/happiest ‘me’ that I can be is all that is necessary to give my daughter a happy, balanced start in life.
