Community Corner

White Knuckle Parenting: Parenting is Hard

Honestly, when do you know that you were a good mom? I wish I knew.

This post was written by Jean Winegardner.

I took my family to the park last Sunday. One of my kids has been wanting to go to the playground on Spring Street in downtown Silver Spring, so my little family of five headed out to climb, spin, and slide there. All three of my kids were having a great time—until the many spinning play structures at that particular park took my kids down one by one. One of them just got dizzy—throwing up into a street grate not too long after we left the park. But one of my kids couldn't hold on to a spinning umbrella that was moving too fast and he shot straight off of the play structure only to hit the wood chips face first.

He came up with a bloody lip, a scraped nose, and a meltdown that he still hasn't totally recovered from.
 
"That turned from a lot of fun to not much fun really fast," my husband said later.
 
Parenting is hard. I said it in my very first White Knuckle Parenting column and I still say it almost every single day. Even on your very best, everything-is-going-right days, parenting is hard. On days when you are barely hanging on and your kids eat dirt because you whirled them too fast on a spin toy? Well, on those days it seems all but impossible.
 
I'm in a little bit of a tough parenting phase right now. My 8-year-old—the one with the new face injury—is having a really hard time. He is a swampy mess of sensory issues, body regulation problems, sibling rivalry, and probably hormones as well. He is struggling, which in turn makes me struggle.
 
I know that I am a good mom. I love my kids unconditionally. I provide them with food, kindness, and fun experiences. I set limits for them but also try to give them freedom. I know that my kids love me back and that they trust me without reservation.
 
Still, it is hard to believe that you are doing a good job at parenting when a frustrated, sad, and face-scarred child is constantly yelling at you about how miserable he is.
 
Honestly, when do you know that you were a good mom? I wish I knew. My parenting goal is to raise happy adults who are proud of being the people that they are. When do I know if I succeeded? I don't know that I ever can. The responsibility of raising other human beings is so great that it is almost a losing proposition. They can never be as happy as I want them to be.
 
Which brings us back to the 8-year-old sobbing at the park and the 10-year-old barfing on the sidewalk. At some point, these are going to turn into funny stories, right? They won't always be traumatic my-mom-destroyed-my-chances-at-life-happiness incidents, right?
 
I guess when I look at my kids' lives, I just want to know that they are doing the best that they can. If I am doing the best that I can, then maybe that is enough. When I look back at their childhoods and know that I gave them experiences that kept them safe but also exposed them to the joys of spinning faster than they can hold on, maybe it's okay that they occasionally eat some dirt.
 
Jean, a.k.a. Stimey, writes a blog at Stimeyland. You can find her on Twitter as @Stimey and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/Stimeyland.


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