I Can’t Be Afraid to Make Parenting Mistakes
Because, they are inevitable.
I taught my son some sign language before he was able to speak. I read that it would ease his frustration while he was working on language development, but it actually delayed his speech.
That was a mistake.
When he was very small, we let him have a white noise machine and lullabies playing in his room every night when he went to bed. It helped soothe him to sleep, but it also made it difficult for him to self-soothe as he got older.
That was another mistake.
I didn’t give my son soda, but he did get lemonade from time to time. It was real lemon juice but a lot of sugar.
Mistake, most likely.
Though I strictly monitored what he watched on television and did restrict his screen time, he still probably had more time with electronics than would be considered ideal.
Aaaannnnd, there’s another mistake.
So, I’m not a perfect mother.
This can hardly be considered a news flash.
I make mistakes all the time. They aren’t even all parenting mistakes. I mess up in a wide variety of ways.
I screw up my organization (she says, as she realizes she forgot about a phone call she needed to make for the third day running). I will never make anyone’s short list of best housekeepers.
The time I tried the prune-based butter substitute in the lemon cookie recipe was a definite mistake. BIG mistake.
Therefore, it can’t come as a surprise to anyone, including myself, that I am an imperfect parent. I’m sure I have yet to identify all the ways in which I have biffed it in my role as Mom.
Isn’t that just an exciting thought calculated to keep me eyes wide at three a.m.?
It’s because I’m human. Duh.
I trust I don’t need to remind you of human frailty.
With the number of decisions I must, as a parent, make every day, it would be impossible to get every one of them right.
More than that, I don’t see how it would be possible to evaluate each decision, even in retrospect, to determine if I was right or wrong.
Let’s accept my assurances that I’m doing my level best.
The brutal truth is, no matter what effort I put into the process, the fact that I am a flawed human, trying to instruct and guide a juvenile human means there are going to be errors.
So, if we’re going to assume my best intentions, we will also have to accept the inevitable shortcomings.
The trouble isn’t the mistakes as much as the second-guessing.
I can accept I won’t always choose the best action or reaction. I can accept that I will have to backtrack and fix problems of my own creation.
That is just a part of life and I can work with that.
What is much more difficult for me is the time between having made a decision and discovering whether or not I blew it.
However lengthy or brief this period of time, I am sure to spend it wondering if I should have done differently.
Now, I know I’ve done the best I can and, even if I did gallop off in the wrong direction, we’ll work it out. Somehow.
However, such rational thought simply does not have a chance at these times.
Most of the time, things move on quickly enough that there isn’t time for Analysis Paralysis to set in. When there is a delay, though, I sometimes find it difficult to move on to the next thing.
Instead, I wait in a state of useless nerves and questioning.
I know I must not let this happen.
Life does, as we are so often told, go on. The Earth keeps spinning. The sun continues to rise and set.
Pick your clichéd platitude.
At any rate, allowing my self-doubt to stop me in my tracks is not an acceptable state of things. So, to help me keep treading water, I remind myself of the times I didn’t mess it up.
When my son was small, I took him almost everywhere with me. I was told I was exposing him to too many people, expecting too much from him, and generally boring the poor child to death. Now, however, my son is comfortable in a wide variety of settings and converses easily with everyone he meets.
This was not one of my mistakes.
When others recommended various ways to propel my son past his fear of dogs, I said no, and allowed him to work through his fear in his own way. When he did find his way through it, he was so proud of himself.
I didn’t make a mistake.
When we turned down offers from relatives to give my son a cheap, old car for his sixteenth birthday, it meant he was in my late-model Civic with all the latest safety features on the day a guy lost control and hit us, head on, at high speed. Thanks to those safety features, my son walked away with a few bruises.
I did NOT make a mistake.
No, I’m not perfect, but I’m not a disaster, either.
If the results of my parenting is any sort of measure of my ratio of mistakes to successes, I think I’m doing alright.
My son is a good kid. Really. Much of this is his natural personality. But I am willing to take credit for his manners, his good education, and the less tangible learning that allows him to choose how to behave.
We are enormously proud of the person he is and is becoming. He will be a genuine benefit to the world, however he chooses to do this.
And you know what? My husband and I have done a good job. We’re still doing a good job.
And you know what else?
I’ve probably made a few more mistakes today. They happen. It’s alright. I don’t have to be perfect. I just have to keep doing my best.
That, I can do.