*Tap tap* *Is this thing on?*
Yep. Apparently, you can not log in to your wordpress blog for approximately three years and it will still be here to greet you. Good to know. Because, after this post, it will probably be another three years before I attempt to write another blog post. Just be forewarned.
So, you should know that I read a lot of mommy blogs. Truth be told, I read probably more mommy blogs than any man in his mid-30s ought to. I call them “articles” when I talk to people, but really, I’m just reading lots and lots of mommy blogs. Oh sure, I read blogs about marketing (for the employment), video games and movies (for the enjoyment) and blogs about politics, television, psychology and marriage. In short, I read a lot of stuff on the web. Some of it is excellent. A fair bit of it is dross. But, all in all, the thing that I regularly come back to when I’m reading is the mommy blogs. And I have two very good reasons why.
1. I feel inadequate as a parent and I want to improve and 2. Misery loves company.
Let me address the second point first about the whole misery thing.
Angela and I are working parents. That means that both of us have full-time, very responsible, very all-consuming jobs. I head up the Marketing Department for an organization that has hundreds of employees and she is a middle school choir teacher. Both of these jobs often require a lot of work outside the normal 9-5 and really drill into our time together as husband and wife and as parents. In a given week, I’ll probably pull 50-60 hours and Angela does a bit more. During the summer, it’s a little easier since Angela doesn’t work, but still, there is a lot to do and we have a great deal of responsibility.
Invariably, what happens then when we get home is that we are simply exhausted, too exhausted, to do almost anything with our kids. They spend all day in daycare (and thank heavens for the magnificent Daybreak Academy which treats daycare less like daycare and more like school) and when they get home all they want to do is rest as well. So, as a family, we often spend most of the evening simply catching our breath for the long day ahead of us tomorrow. What that also means is that we’re not out on activities a great deal, we’re not playing in the dandelions together and we’re not always having magical family moments. Most of the time, because everyone is so tired, getting the kids to do anything devolves into a giant mess of emotions and frustration. Oh sure, some days are better than others, but most of the time, I’m at my breaking point when I come home and it takes very little to set me off. And usually, something happens to push my emotional state over the edge and I just…can’t. I just, can’t anymore.
What happens next is either sullenness, loud frustrating cries of pain (aka, the adult temper tantrum) or a mixture of both. Any way you slice it, it’s not a really pretty picture. At least, in my head, it doesn’t seem that way.
So, I read mommy bloggers because, if what I read is true, pretty much everyone feels the same way. Exhausted, worn out, bone-tired and drained beyond the point of reason. And it’s comforting to know that this particular syndrome isn’t applicable simply to dual income families. It happens whether the mom works outside the home, works out of the house or is simply a SAHM. All in all, we are all tired. And I know why. Everyone knows why. It’s the expectations we heap on ourselves.
Which brings me to my first point. I read because I want to improve.
A little background here. I do not come from a large family. I was not brought up in a home where I had to help with a large number of siblings, even though I was the first child. Angela is 5 of 7 in her family so she too, didn’t have a lot of the experience that older children get to help out with the younger children and thereby, learn some parenting techniques. Additionally, just because I was parented as a child doesn’t mean I have any clue about how to actually parent. I mean, I wasn’t taking any notes or anything along the way. I was just interested in doing whatever I had to to get to those video games the end of the day. So, my parenting experience is limited.
Additionally, when Angela and I got married, I didn’t really want kids. In fact, not only did I not want kids, I was absolutely certain that children would prevent me from being happy. Six years into this thing, I’ve been disabused of that notion, but three kids later, I’ve learned that having children brings me inexplicable joy, but it also brings with it a paralyzing fear because I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING HERE.
Our oldest, Colin, is six. I’m certain that I’ve already inflicted deep psychological wounds on his young mind that will cause him to seek out therapy in his later years. Joshua is our middle child at 3 and he’s crazy. Bees in his head crazy. Love that kid, but with him, I know that I will be called to the hospital one day to find him a body cast after he attempted to jump 30 tractor trailers on his motorcycle for some SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY event. And Christine, who is a year old, is teething and she is NOT handling it well. Which means I am not handling it well.
So, I read the mommy bloggers hoping to avoid the hospital, the therapist and even my own therapist at some point, so I can find something new I can try to improve their behavior or encourage them to read, or help them with their music, or, or, or, whatever.
But, what often happens is that I read and I start to get down on myself because I’m not doing this with my kids and not doing that with my kids. I’m not saying anything revelatory here, but as I try to learn how to improve as a parent, I often find that all I do is beat myself up about how I’m not doing “AWESOME THING THAT IS AWESOME” with my kids and how they’re destined for a life of community college and fast food management. And it’s all my fault.
Which brings me to expectations. And let me be blunt about this. I AM DONE WITH EXPECTATIONS. DONE. DONE. DONE.
I suppose every parent comes to this threshold at one point or another in their parenting lives, but mine is today. And let me tell you why.
I left work later than usual today. It was another hectic day filled with too many deadlines, people telling me that their project is priority 1 above all other priorty 1s and on top of that I had to spend a while with the board who came in for a surprise meeting. All in all, a mostly normal day, but hectic and draining, nonetheless. At the end of the day, I got a call from a friend of mine who I do some work for on the side. Nice guy, but he’s working for a company that is bat-crap crazy and his boss is an angry version of Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice. I spent almost two hours on the phone with him while he complained about his job. Now, I’m all for helping people, but all I could think of during the call was how this was cutting in to my time at home with my kids, which I don’t always enjoy, but feel I need to at least be somewhat physically present for. So, after the call, I drive home worried that I’m damaging my kids psyche because I’m not there and I’m even more on edge when I step through the door.
Fortunately, kids have a way of reminding you why they’re so awesome. The boys came up and hugged me and were excited to tell me about how the behaved well at school and that they got all their rewards. I told them how proud I was. And then, Angela told me a story about what Joshua did today and my heart about melted.
Joshua, because he’s the middle child and the second boy, doesn’t get the same level of attention as Colin. We try not to make it that way, but it sometimes happens. Because of that, he’s been having a lot of discipline problems at school. Not behaving, not following directions and not making very good choices. For weeks on end, Angela and I have been trying to help him improve his behavior with no success. Finally, a few days ago, something changed in him after we had severely limited his privileges for a couple of days and we went through what is now known in family lore as the “two days of tears.” Since then, he’s been good at school and behaving well at home.
Then, today, I learn that at one point during the day, he noticed that one of his little classmates was having a hard time getting to the handle on the sink to turn on the water. Without prompting from the teacher, Joshua noticed it and ran over and turned it on for the little girl and just smiled at her and went back to playing. I was very proud.
What that told me about myself as a parent was not that I was doing a good job, but simply that I was trying to do a good job–and that was enough. It was enough. Yes, I got home from work late today, but I tried to be a good parent by spending 15 minutes around the table together at dinner time. Yes, after dinner was done, I sent the boys up to play video games while I twiddled around on my phone. Yes, I decided Christine needed to go to bed early because I was tired of her constant screaming. Yes, I did all these things that I’m not supposed to do, and I do them everyday, but it doesn’t matter. I try to do the best I can every day and whatever I can do that day, is whatever I can do. Some days it’ll be more. Lots of days it will be less. Some days, I will lock myself in the bathroom just to get away from them. But, I always try. And that’s all that matters. To me and especially to them. Like a popular ad says, you don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect parent.
So, that’s all I’m going to do from now on is try. I will fail lots. I will, hopefully, succeed in some ways. But I will try to be a good parent. And that’s all. No more fulfilling of unreasonable and made up expectations and no more beating myself up about it. I will simply parent in the best way I know how, try to improve in reasonable ways and trust that it will be enough. After all, in this life, we must all walk by faith at some point.
Does this mean that I will stop reading mommy blogs? Probably not. But instead, I’ll read them in a different light now, knowing that progress is far more important than perfection. And whatever progress looks like to me is what it looks like to me, and that’s all that matters.
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