Once when Anna was a baby and wouldn't stop crying I told her if she didn't stop soon I was going to take off all my clothes and run up and down the street naked. She was too young to know what I was saying, but Charles wasn't. He calmly responded with, "Don't you think that would be a little embarrassing?" I'm not sure he understood the concept of hyperbole. Anyway, ever since then when I get frustrated enough I make the same threat.
This week I happened across two separate magazine articles offering expertise on how to be a good parent. According to both of them I've been a bad one. Apparently you aren't supposed to threaten. However, now that my children are young adults I guess I'm off the hook. But only a little. Whatever bad decisions they make in life will surely come back to having a lousy mother.
I guess using a Tazer on them wasn't such a good idea either.
Okay fine, I didn't really use a Tazer on my children. But if I believe the message of the parenting articles, not using a Tazer is pretty much the only thing I did right. One of the articles even detailed a strategy for how to give praise.
Really? We need instructions on how to give praise?
I don't remember following instructions on how to give my children praise. Praise seemed like a fairly straight forward exercise. I wasn't aware there was a right way or a wrong way. I just did it the best way I knew how and for the most part they seem okay. They don't seem too badly screwed up today because I didn't praise them the right way then. But the truth is, praise aside, I didn't parent my children perfectly. At all. Sometimes I was negligent. Sometimes I was too attentive. Sometimes I yelled. Sometimes I was inconsistent. Sometimes I was too controlling. Sometimes too harsh. Sometimes too soft.
Sometimes I just was.
Because like almost every parent, I was doing the best I could. Which is something I have to remind myself about my own parents too. There are no perfect parents. Nor are there perfect children.
Thank God. Perfection is so overrated.
We weren't (nor never will be) a perfect family. Consequently, my children are now entering the age where family get-togethers provide the opportunity to dredge up old stories about the times I went insane. They laugh about me losing my mind and yelling. Or the time when I dumped the entire bag of bunny marshmallows in the parking lot because they disobeyed me. Or the time I threw the full water bottle across the room in exasperation. (For the record, I didn't throw the water bottle at anyone...just across the room.) Those things didn't happen every day. But they happened. And although they make for funny stories now, at the time I felt terrible.
I didn't need to be so hard on myself though. In the end, my children weren't scarred because I sometimes lost my patience. They admit they often drove me to it. They also say they never expected me to be a perfect parent. All they really expected from me was love.
I think striving to be the best parent possible is a good thing. I'd never discourage someone from that. But striving to be a perfect parent raising the perfect child is a recipe for unnecessary stress and pressure. It isn't going to happen. Kids aren't always going to be what we want them to be, parents are going to screw up, and later on all that striving for perfection will just get in the way of honest relationships.
In the end it doesn't really matter how perfect anybody was. In the end all that really matters is that my children know they are loved. So yeah, they misbehaved and I dumped the bunny marshmallows in the parking lot.
(Source: Google Images)
They cried. I felt bad. They missed out on gelatin and corn syrup molded into something that vaguely resembled a pastel rabbit that spring. My self imposed penance for the long ago hasty punishment has been making sure they receive bunny marshmallows every Easter. I realize I really don't need to. Because even if I never gave them another bunny marshmallow in their entire lives my children would know they are loved. Loved for who they are.
Not what they do.
Not how they act.
Nor look.
Nor what they accomplish.
They are simply loved.
I'm absolutely certain I could never love my children more than I already do. I'm fairly certain I won't ever again feel the need to dump a bag of bunny marshmallows on the ground. But that running naked up and down the street thing...
...I make no guarantees.
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