The Perfect Parent

In honor of the anniversary of me becoming a parent for the first time, I wanted to explore a bit about what parenting looks like, and the ways I see choices as a parent impact kids.  Often, the people I work with will grapple with having parents who loved them and provided for them, and who missed the mark in some way shape or form.  As a parent, it is damn hard to know if what you are doing is right because there is no handbook, and it isn’t like kids can fill out a satisfaction survey to give you feedback on what you do great and where you can improve.  Hell, for all they know, you DO have a handbook and are following it precisely. They have no frame of reference for you and your performance.  So, you have to try and cobble together what parenting looks like from your own lived experience, your friends, your family, blog posts, books and tv shows as well as probably 15 other sources that will likely make you feel more like a failure than a success.  Unless you are looking at a terrible parent, you will likely often struggle with feeling inadequate. 

I am not, nor will I ever be a perfect parent.  That is literally an impossible task.  Most of us want to do the best for our kids, but we are all human and have bad days even as parents.  However, there are some things I have found in my time as a therapist and a parent that I think are crucial to being a “good enough” parent, which is really what kids need and deserve.  Before we go any further, “good enough” in this sense does not mean what it means when I have painted a room and left splatters and deemed it good enough to move on in this sense.  Good enough means we meet the needs of our children and minimize the harm we may accidentally cause, and when we do cause harm we apologize for it.  For most parents this may mean apologizing for snapping at our kid when the things that made us on edge had nothing to do with them, and letting them know we are sorry, they did not deserve that, and that nobody should ever speak to them in anger.  We set the tone for them and what they can expect, showing them imperfection is normal and that so is accountability.  That is what I mean when I talk about being a good enough parent.

On that note, let’s start with modeling imperfection.  My oldest was concerned when she was going to have to perform in front of a crowd for the first time.  Her biggest fear was making a mistake in front of people.  So, we talked about what she was afraid of, and if she thought that anything was going to change in the eyes of people who love her most.  I asked her if she thought I would love her less or would refuse to acknowledge her if she made a mistake, and she looked at me with a crinkled face and said no.  I told her of course not, because her value has nothing to do with how she performs, she is deserving of all my love and acceptance even if she faced the wrong way.  We talked some more, and I told her that mistakes are a very normal part of being a human and that we all make them, and they are an opportunity for us to learn and grow.  Then we talked some about the things that we never get right the first time and how that did not make us “bad” in any sense, as we are all learning and growing.  Armed with that knowledge, she still felt the normal anxiety most of us feel when performing in front of people, but she was able to go to sleep and it never rose again to the point of her feeling overwhelmed.  She then went out and did a great job, and we had donuts after because donuts are love.

Since I also mentioned accountability, I want to focus on that some too.  Recently, I did not believe her when she said she had put clothes she needed the next day in the wash.  I said I looked for them over and over and could not find them.  In the past, she has said she put things in the wash only for me to find them on the floor in her bedroom and them not be ready when they were needed.  So, in this case I assumed the same had happened.  I gave up and left her room exasperated because neither of us could find them in her room on the floor.  I went to finish folding laundry after putting her to bed and found that static electricity had attached the clothes to the inside of one of my shirts, making them seemingly to have disappeared.  I felt HORRIBLE.  In that moment I wanted to apologize to her and let her know I made a mistake, but she was already asleep.  The next morning, I showed her that I found the clothes and that I was very sorry for not believing her.  I acknowledged I had made a mistake, took accountability for it and made sure she understood the mistake was on my end and nothing she had done.  My goal is to model for her that this is what to expect in someone.  Just because I am her parent does not make me infallible.  This also ties back into making it okay to fail and modeling the behavior we should exhibit when we fall short.

Ultimately, there are tons of things we have to navigate through as parents.  We will make mistakes along the way, but we should let our kids know that they are not there to serve us nor are they responsible for our happiness.  Rather, we let our kids know they are loved and accepted no matter who they are.  We teach them to be good humans, to treat others with respect and kindness, and also how to set boundaries while giving them the tools to set those boundaries by letting them know how deeply they are loved.  The moment we make our kids feel less than is the moment they will begin struggling with boundaries and feeling like their worth is tied to what they do rather than seeing that they have worth simply by existing.  It is a hard job balancing setting limits and building a kid up, but if we can walk that line, we will be the good enough parent our kids need.