Parenting is an exercise in being almost overwhelmed.
I mean, you can’t afford to be completely overwhelmed. At the end of it — whatever it is — you’ve got to get things done and stay in control. But it feels like a razor’s edge sometimes. And with so many variables, with days that feel so long and so very short by turns, you get the sense that you’re missing something. That you’re dropping the ball. That you’re not doing right by your kid. There are a thousand voices, inside you and around you, that will chastise you for a million things.
If I give that popsicle my child will be on TV getting taken out of his house with a forklift in thirty years.
If I let her watch a video while I shower my child will have her brain melted and dripping out of her ears by the time I’m back.
If I buy a toy this trip, my child will be spoiled, their work ethic so thoroughly destroyed from this singular act they’ll live on the streets someday.
If I don’t, my child will feel uncared for and will slowly descend into abject hatred for me.
We’re plagued as parents by a sense that there’s more to be had. I mean, I’m not playing guitar and singing ballad duets with Sprocket on YouTube, or putting together memory scrapbooks with boarding passes and souvenirs, or hiking through a forest with Tater in some snazzy baby backpack as he points at every new wonder in amazement. I’m just trying to get food in and dirt off in the midst of a blizzard of bills and appointment reminders.
Do I even know what I’m doing?
Not really. And neither do you. But that’s okay, because our kids don’t know any better. My child will not know how little I think I know unless I let on. There is no such thing as the Best Parent®, so we’ve all got to quit trying to get there. You’re a good one, and that’s plenty enough. Here are some tactics for keeping yourself grounded:
Don’t judge yourself by marketing — it’s designed to make you feel guilty.
As one example I took at random, consider this PediaSure ad. It features a worried mother watching her son struggle on a playground. This sorry excuse can’t reach the rings on the jungle gym, and he can’t effectively play on a teeter-totter with another kid because, well, he’s just too damn scrawny.
Enter PediaSure to save the day. Mom explains to us onlookers that pouring two bottles of it down our runts’ gullets a day can fatten them up so they don’t get catapaulted by the healthy kids and can, uh, make them taller I guess?
Regardless, the suggestion is implicit: If my kids are under the 50th centile in anything and I’m not giving them PediaSure, I’m not a good parent. My child will be doomed to getting shoulder checked into lockers by the PediaSure kids for a decade.
In our advertising saturated culture, you’re unfortunately going to have to endure this insidious whisper for two decades as a parent, from diaper cream salesmen all the way to college prep course hucksters. And all along the way your kids are going to be pelted with it too.
Learn to ignore it, and teach them to do the same.
Nothing personal against the good people at Abbott (the makers of PediaSure), but their motivation doesn’t lie in your Junior being playground alpha. It’s in getting your money. And they’ve decided the slickest way to do that is to make you afraid of the consequences if you don’t.
So what’s a good way to winnow the voices in the wind?
Learn to distinguish needs from non-needs.
As you look at everything being offered by advertisers, think about what percentage of those things were even available to your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents — much less how many of them were considered essential. And remember that they obviously kept their kids alive long enough for them to grow up and reproduce.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of things that we’ve developed in the interim which in the developed world are all but essential, or at least highly desirable. I’m not imploring you to send your kids to school in gunny sacks with a neck and arm holes cut out of them, or to throw everything with a microchip in it out your living room window, or to trade your airbagged, sensored vehicle in for a 1964 Ford Fairlane (or whatever it was you grew up rattling around in). But know too that you don’t have to buy everything in the baby or kid aisle — or even some significant percentage of it.
Think about the base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and how it can inform your buying choices:
My child will get black lung from this air!
No they won’t. Does your kid need reasonably clean air? Sure.
Does she need a Dyson air purifier in her nursery? Probably not.
Who knows what’s in this water?!
There’s a decent chance you do if you’re in the United States. While there have been high profile water quality lapses, if you live there you’re very likely to be supplied by a public water system subject to and in compliance with federal regulations. Does your child need clean water to drink? Of course.
Does it have to be artesian, or vapor distilled, or filtered through volcanic soil, or from the recesses of a glacier? No.
This food label doesn’t have enough buzzwords!
Does your child need a wide variety of healthy, nutritious food? Without question.
Does every morsel need to be grass fed, certified organic, locally sourced, or (insert current food fad)? No.
My child will never be comfortable here!
Do your offspring require safe, comfortable shelter? Absolutely.
Is it imperative they all have their own bedroom?
Are you going to stunt their growth if they have a small backyard?
Are they doomed if you can’t afford to live anywhere but a small apartment?
No, and no, and no.
My child will be so tired!
Does your kiddo need restorative sleep? An unqualified yes.
Must it be done in a custom bed, or under high thread count sheets, or on top of a pricey mattress you saw an ad for on the Internet featuring some kind of technology never before seen in the realm of lying down? Nope.
These clothes came out last season!
Is it important that your youngling wear well-fitting clothes that are appropriate to the season? For sure.
Do they need to be either name brand or brand new? Not at all.
This all applies to everything all the way up the pyramid. Give your child everything they actually need, and make sure your judgment about what those things are is informed by the reality you live in, and not a marketing executive or a jingle writer.
Or me, for that matter.
Do you know what will foster that frame of mind in you?
Embrace simplicity in your parenting.
We want the world for our kids, so it’s logical we’d try to give it to them. Our kids are born and we start throwing things at them — from the most interactive books to the most stimulating toys to the most interesting experiences. And then at a certain point we start shuttling them around to even more things. There are songs and games and videos and playdates and camps. Otherwise my child will be left behind!
Think about what’s missing in all of that motion and noise, though. No spaces. No silences. We forget that our children are blossoming flowers, and that as much as any other resource, flowers need space and voids. Too much fertilizer will burn a plant’s roots — they need inert material between. Too much water will rot them — they need cycles of dry to utilize it. Too much sun will scorch them — they need cycles of shade.
Children similarly need cycles of quiet. Of rest. Of silence. Of unstructured time. Because those are the plowed and fertile fields they will sow their own seeds into. Every time they play with simple toys, their imaginations fill the gaps. Every time they are given a period of quiet, they have an opportunity to assimilate everything that’s gone on prior and think higher order thoughts (whether they always take the opportunity is another matter — what counts is that they’re given the chance).
As the concerned, conscientious parent you are, you’re going to feel guilty for those times. Sprocket is four, and it’s often tempting to scoop her up and play with her when she’s seemingly idle, or to pick something to read to her, or to play some kind of structured game. And while little Tater is currently a tumbleweed of successive needs, the same will soon go for him.
Those things are fine in their place, but it’s important for your kids to have the opportunity for free play. To just toddle in a circle babbling to a stuffed dog, or to bang two wooden blocks together for reasons unknown, or to go to a little library of books, choose one of their own liking and sit and read to themselves, even if it’s unintelligible to you. As lazy and neglectful as you might feel watching from a distance, it’s vital that they be able to take ownership of their own minds. To create their own domains, both within and without.
To have space to grow into. Just like us.
The world around you often finds it in its own best interest to make you feel like a bad parent. If you’ve taken the time to read this, I’m quite confident you’re not.
But you won’t be the best parent either.
You can’t be, because you’re the same as the rest of us, with unique shortcomings scattered alongside your strengths. You’re going to have to work around those shortcomings, and give your kid a solid springboard into the rest of their lives as best you’re able with the resources you can bring to bear, bearing in mind the time is short.
That will make you a good parent.
And friend, that’s enough.
It’s enough.
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This post was previously published on THEUNBOTHEREDFATHER.COM.
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