The Inconvenient Truth About Raising Kids

I’ve been sitting on this post for a couple of weeks. What should I share? Who am I to give advice on raising kids when mine are so small? Then my good friend Sommer wrote about listening to kids, even when you do not like what you hear. Her story was uncanny timing while I also wrote about what I recently heard and what it triggered inside of me. My time is limited these days but I decided to finish it up and publish anyway.

My nearly three year old daughter recently told me sadly “you are a mommy for Evan and daddy is a daddy for me.”

Olivia found a beautiful way to communicate the loss she felt in that moment about sharing me with her baby brother. While I could have celebrated this moment of sharing all I felt was fear and sadness. Her words pricked a very deep part of me.

As Olivia nears the same age that my own birth mother left, I have recently felt deep emotions welling up to the surface. Watching Olivia I find myself considering how a three year old would process the experience of a parent leaving. What sorts of conclusions would she make about herself and how would she heal with so few ways to understand and express her feelings. I always knew that becoming a parent would be my greatest challenge, especially to a daughter, and Liv nearing three has rekindled many feelings I have never fully let go of. Her statement sparked fear that I might also cause this pain in my daughter.

My baggage. I have spent a lifetime carrying or covering for wounds. Instead of facing and feeling what I have never allowed myself to fully do, I have created a huge pool of impossible expectations for myself. Many of  my thoughts and reactions are designed to constantly verify or negate the most primal question: Am I good enough?

This is where positive parenting and our personal baggage intersect. Life has an uncanny way of constantly colliding with our sore spots, whether we are aware of it or not. Trying to resolve family struggles with practical book read solutions often does not get to the heart of the matter. No matter what type of positive parenting technique you add to your tool kit, your prickly spots are still under the surface and they have tremendous power over how you perceive every situation. This is the reason we tend to give “our shit” to our children. The habit of self protection often overrides parenting techniques so that when our buttons are pushed we react. Each parent has their own threshold where their best intentions for positive parenting are rendered worthless. Reacting can be small or large, it does not matter because any reacting shows a loss in objectivity and the presence of baggage.

I know I am not alone in trying to cover deep pains with impossible expectations of myself. Why else would so many parents care so much how they are perceived by others. We aim to look good in the eyes of our peers, our kids, teachers and even our spouses. This is why we balk when our kids act out in public, when they say something hurtful to us, when others have something to say about how our kids are adjusting. When something happens that does not fit into our version of reality, of what we expect, we balk and hide, feel bad and then justify and defend.

Some people observe themselves doing this and some do not, but most people do live life on the roller coaster. And all because on a deep level, we are afraid to feel discomfort. To have our shit shaken up. If you wonder if you have unresolved pain look at how you react when anyone, including your kids, say something that contradicts the reality you want for yourself. This was the sadness I felt when Liv said I was a mommy for Evan ( and not for her, I assumed)

In raising children mindfully an honest question needs to be asked.

Most parents say they want their kids to be happy. Do we really know what is best for our children when we do not know our Selves? Can we really model happiness when we are tied up in the roller coaster of our own drama?

After months of resurfacing childhood baggage and other unresolved emotions I finally said to my husband that I feel suffocated by my stuff and I’m tired of it. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t continue to pay attention to thoughts that defend, protect, justify, rationalize, criticize, judge, get irritated, try to control, feel lonely or judged, proud, hopeful and lost, unworthy, geeky or diva, power mom or failing miserably…Isn’t it insanity?

Raising kids brings our stuff out. It’s the inconvenient truth of parenting. There’s no getting around the fact that parenting puts you face to face with your drama. But I am faced with one realization: HAPPINESS IS A CHOICE. It doesn’t mean it’s easy to take that choice, but it IS a choice regardless. It’s glaringly painfully true when you realize there are no excuses for sacrificing happiness.

Who wants to have a closed heart over so many little details that just won’t matter on your death bed? Why be guilty? Or bent up over anything? Why not let go instead? Let emotions go because we know holding hurt will only block the amount of happiness we can experience. Not because of any concept of forgiveness or other garbage, but simply because holding drama is TIRING and blocks the light in your life.

In raising kids, I don’t think any parenting book will get by the fact that most of us need to work on ourselves first to be better parents. Parenting does not get easier by getting better at “managing” our kids. The best parenting advice I’ve ever heard is work on letting go. And work on knowing who you really are.

I’m not going to be asking anymore Am I good Enough, instead I’ll ask: Who Am I?

Work on letting go and knowing who you are until the day you die so that you can experience how parenting LIVING from a place of freedom feels like.

When you start to feel the million and one feelings life hands you on a silver platter STOP and FEEL IT. Feel yourself get twisted up over something someone said and then let it go cause it’s not worth your happiness. When you feel guilty or wonder if you can do enough as a parent, feel what that type of insecurity feels like and then let it go. Don’t walk around holding a guilty feeling….that’s not Happiness.

Let it ALL go so that your parenting decisions are based in the present moment and not some event that happened 35 years (or two days) ago.

After stating to my husband that I was done with the roller coaster ride of my impossible expectations and trying to answer “am I good enough” I committed myself to letting go (again). Real TAKE NO PRISONERS Letting go. It’s been FUN and yes, quite challenging to reacquaint myself with the energy of feeling feelings again without holding or getting involved.

Now if I could just get a good nights rest! One day…

This post was entirely inspired by a great unparenting book:  “The Untethered Soul, The Journey Beyond Yourself” by Michael Singer.

image credit: the fantastic alicepopkorn