The currency in which mommies trade at play dates is easy to see: guilt. I knew this before this week, but I am convinced now that it is one of the few things moms have in common despite how we raise our kids, where we live, or what age our kids are. Guilt seems to be an emotion than can cross all lines, sort of like love is supposed to. I sometimes wonder if guilt has been more successful and what that means about the message we’re sending our kids.
At a play date this week with a sweet mom I recently met, we started discussing what we do with stay-at-home kids when something else in the house absolutely has to be done for the inhabitants of the household to survive. This mom is great: she and her son are out and about by nine every morning regardless of heat or cold; she is always asking me about new play date ideas I didn’t even know were out there. Her son is precious and secure in the love she gives him. So I was surprised at the shame that crept into her voice when she said, “I have to let my son watch TV while I cook. I use it to keep him still while I make dinner. That’s awful, right?”
Another new mom with a nine-week-old started spilling her guts in the doctor’s waiting room this week. She vowed this would be her only child, didn’t understand how this person could ruin her entire sleep life, and complained that absolutely not one person had warned her that this would be harder than her full-time job, a job she said she is now counting the days to get back to. Then she assured us that she loved the kid, hung her head in shame and said, “I’m a bad mom, I know I am, right?” I told her she was just a very tired person and would be for at least the next year or so. Very tired people aren’t the same as bad moms, they just feel like bad moms.
Apparently neither of these ladies got the message about my 18-month-old attempting to brush his teeth with my shaving razor last week. Could they have also missed the screams leaping from my house when my daughter learned push and pull were not the same thing and almost broke her nose with her dresser drawer? I was the one who asked her to close the drawer because she was closer to it, and I didn’t notice it was hanging on the edge just waiting to be touched.
Another friend and I frequently talk about how parenting more than one child leaves you constantly worried you’re shorting someone attention they need. Even though we still never do much during the day that isn’t dedicated to the care or entertainment of someone else, we still manage to spend the end of the day before we sleep running a list through our heads of how we could have done better.
This is play date banter: moms trade tales of everything we’re doing wrong, ways our kids are going to be irreparably damaged, and then try to make each other feel better. We know this isn’t productive; we know from the fact that none of our kids have experienced major head injuries after seeing if they can bounce each other off the couch that they’re not as fragile as they look. Still, it’s always there.
I honestly think some of the allure of guilt is its never ending ability to attach itself to pride and confuse the two in our brains. I mean, if I don’t feel guilty about everything, then obviously I don’t care about my kids. If I don’t care about my kids, I’m a bad parent. But if I feel guilty all the time it’s just because I care so much, and everyone knows the good parents care the most, therefore they are the guiltiest feeling of them all. See how that math works?
None of the moms I talk to who are feeling guilty have a reason to. Your kid watches 30 minutes of TV so you can prepare food for him? I don’t think this is the end of the world. In a sleep-deprived-new-mom fog you proclaim parenting as the hardest job ever? Yeah, you’re going to feel that way when the fog wears off. It’s an awesome job, and it also takes everything you have 100% of the time. You have two kids so someone has to wait for their homemade lunch to be prepared while the other one feeds off your body? Everybody will get fed, and if we’re talking about my kids, they probably just ate 10 minutes ago anyway.
Even knowing this I realize it’s going to take a huge effort on my part to turn around the guilt=pride=if-I’m-such-a-great-parent-why-the-heck-does-feeling-guilty-all-the-time-not- make-me-feel-like-a-better-one emotion. I know it’s not God’s plan for me to feel this way all the time; I know He doesn’t want that for these other moms either. But how do you practice being reflective and making sure what you do is in the best interest of your kids while not being obsessive to the point of constant shame? I don’t know. I’m going to pray and try to recognize when these feelings creep up so I can stop them before they take over my brain. I’m going to focus on all the awesome things I try to do for the kids daily, even if Sammy is sporting a wicked cut from wielding a razor and Wren has a purple nose. I’m going to encourage other mothers to do the same.
I’m also going to try to keep my kids from reading this blog post when they’re older. Wren would be upset if she knew she had ever had to wait for food, and that would make me feel guilty. ;)
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Friday, June 15, 2012
Fathers
Staring out at the Crescent Hotel and the high rises in uptown Dallas, it occurred to me again what a fabulous husband I have. I was standing in his new cubicle office, one I hadn’t seen since his recent promotion. Dennis works so hard for us, so hard that I get to work part-time at a library, pretty much my dream job, and be a full-time parent the rest of the time.
The odd thing is I frequently completely forget my husband has a life outside our house. I know he leaves every morning and comes home dressed in clothes that are way too nice to wear to the park, but I don’t fully appreciate that he gets out of bed every morning and takes advantage of every opportunity the Lord has given him to provide for us. He commutes; he works 10 hour days, though his schedule is awesome because the time off is amazing; he has this whole other pile of issues waiting for him to deal with at work. I have grown accustomed to just seeing him as a dad.
Dennis is a full-time parent. When he comes home I am sometimes already at work leaving only notes behind about the status of every one’s vitamins, moods, poops, and temperaments. He does the rest. When I arrive home from work, both my little loves are asleep with their baths taken, hair brushed, and stories of adventures with Dad running through their heads. Dennis takes them to the pool, the park, the mall, for walks, wherever he thinks they’ll have fun. He makes them Batman and Flash masks and videos them
running up and down the hall like superheroes. He reads them Bible stories and says their prayers with them before bed.
When we’re both home, he is just as involved, just as full-time. And honestly, I think the fact that he is so on all the time makes me forget how hard my life would be if he wasn’t.
I have high expectations for fathers because I have a great one. So many things that Dennis does don’t always register as awesome the way they should because I grew up with a dad who believed in full-time parenting as well. My dad came to every Donuts for Dad we had at school; he didn’t miss a field day. He has videos of pretty much every dance recital, drill team competition, piano recital, everything we ever did. My dad spent a night sleeping under my crib so I would stay asleep(I was a bit of a high maintenance sleeper, which may be why my kids don’t give me a break in the sleep department until well past their one year birthday).
The gift I hope I can pass on from my father to my kids is the gift of being there, being present and available. Even now that the dance recitals and field days are over for me, my dad has never stopped letting me know
he’s here. This was illustrated best when Sammy was in the hospital at 10-days-old fighting pneumonia. My dad and stepmom were there the morning after he was admitted and the only question they had was: What do you need us to do? I have no doubt if I had said, “Go clean my toilets” they would have done it. Instead, they juggled keeping Wren entertained and calm while Dennis and I stayed at the hospital. They came to the hospital to offer me rest when someone else was with Wren. My dad just sat and held Sammy for hours, and it was the only time that whole day Sammy calmed down enough to sleep and stop fighting all the tubes running in his little body.
The next weekend, my heart leapt when I saw my Dad and Judy come through the door. We were nine days into an 11 day stay in the PICU at Children’s. Dennis and I split our time between home and hospital, with me staying at the hospital nightly just in case the feeding tube was removed and I could breastfeed again and just to make sure Sammy was okay. The feeling that came over me just seeing my dad at the door reminded me of being a kid again: my dad’s here, everything will be okay now. The three of us shared
the couch bed and recliners, took shifts with Sammy and shifts sleeping. I took showers, a luxury at that point.
It didn’t occur to me until later the personal hell my dad must have been going through: a grandson with pneumonia, watching Dennis and I suffer while Wren struggled with her own confused emotions. He stayed strong for us offering a calm to the situation. We’ve talked about it since, and I think we always will. It was a traumatic unforgettable time, but there were glimpses of good and so many of those came when my dad was there.
As is true with Dennis, I have gotten rather used to this behavior, so much that I take it for granted daily. So thank you to my dad for being the kind of dad I need and to the father of my children for being the kind of dad they need. The importance of what you do is not recognized enough, and the thanks you receive can never repay all you give.
The odd thing is I frequently completely forget my husband has a life outside our house. I know he leaves every morning and comes home dressed in clothes that are way too nice to wear to the park, but I don’t fully appreciate that he gets out of bed every morning and takes advantage of every opportunity the Lord has given him to provide for us. He commutes; he works 10 hour days, though his schedule is awesome because the time off is amazing; he has this whole other pile of issues waiting for him to deal with at work. I have grown accustomed to just seeing him as a dad.
Dennis is a full-time parent. When he comes home I am sometimes already at work leaving only notes behind about the status of every one’s vitamins, moods, poops, and temperaments. He does the rest. When I arrive home from work, both my little loves are asleep with their baths taken, hair brushed, and stories of adventures with Dad running through their heads. Dennis takes them to the pool, the park, the mall, for walks, wherever he thinks they’ll have fun. He makes them Batman and Flash masks and videos them
running up and down the hall like superheroes. He reads them Bible stories and says their prayers with them before bed.
When we’re both home, he is just as involved, just as full-time. And honestly, I think the fact that he is so on all the time makes me forget how hard my life would be if he wasn’t.
I have high expectations for fathers because I have a great one. So many things that Dennis does don’t always register as awesome the way they should because I grew up with a dad who believed in full-time parenting as well. My dad came to every Donuts for Dad we had at school; he didn’t miss a field day. He has videos of pretty much every dance recital, drill team competition, piano recital, everything we ever did. My dad spent a night sleeping under my crib so I would stay asleep(I was a bit of a high maintenance sleeper, which may be why my kids don’t give me a break in the sleep department until well past their one year birthday).
The gift I hope I can pass on from my father to my kids is the gift of being there, being present and available. Even now that the dance recitals and field days are over for me, my dad has never stopped letting me know
he’s here. This was illustrated best when Sammy was in the hospital at 10-days-old fighting pneumonia. My dad and stepmom were there the morning after he was admitted and the only question they had was: What do you need us to do? I have no doubt if I had said, “Go clean my toilets” they would have done it. Instead, they juggled keeping Wren entertained and calm while Dennis and I stayed at the hospital. They came to the hospital to offer me rest when someone else was with Wren. My dad just sat and held Sammy for hours, and it was the only time that whole day Sammy calmed down enough to sleep and stop fighting all the tubes running in his little body.
The next weekend, my heart leapt when I saw my Dad and Judy come through the door. We were nine days into an 11 day stay in the PICU at Children’s. Dennis and I split our time between home and hospital, with me staying at the hospital nightly just in case the feeding tube was removed and I could breastfeed again and just to make sure Sammy was okay. The feeling that came over me just seeing my dad at the door reminded me of being a kid again: my dad’s here, everything will be okay now. The three of us shared
the couch bed and recliners, took shifts with Sammy and shifts sleeping. I took showers, a luxury at that point.
It didn’t occur to me until later the personal hell my dad must have been going through: a grandson with pneumonia, watching Dennis and I suffer while Wren struggled with her own confused emotions. He stayed strong for us offering a calm to the situation. We’ve talked about it since, and I think we always will. It was a traumatic unforgettable time, but there were glimpses of good and so many of those came when my dad was there.
As is true with Dennis, I have gotten rather used to this behavior, so much that I take it for granted daily. So thank you to my dad for being the kind of dad I need and to the father of my children for being the kind of dad they need. The importance of what you do is not recognized enough, and the thanks you receive can never repay all you give.
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