Parenting Bag

My husband grew up spending a lot of time on the water. His family always had a boat and throughout his childhood the majority of their family vacations were spent boating. He really wanted to keep this tradition alive in our family. I had never been on a boat until I met my husband and I had never been on a 2-week boating trip with a family of five. My husband’s alter ego comes out when he is boating, Captain Dad, rather than Dad, and he belts out the orders at everyone even the dog As I wheeled my large bag to the stern of the boat, he started laughing hysterically. He said, “We travel light!” There is not room for baggage. Well, to be honest, I did not like this at all. I wanted my stuff. I sweet-talked him into letting me have my suitcase.

Family dynamics on a 2-week boating trip with five people and a dog, is very interesting. With extremely tight quarters and long days on the water, you can only imagine how this went down. It seemed like at every turning wave my husband and I disagreed. We disagreed on our destination, what to have for dinner, potty breaks, card games, crabbing locations. What was intended to be a family memory-building vacation turned into a vacation full of stress over making the “best decisions”. I really needed a vacation after that vacation.

I have come to the realization that a lot of baggage comes from parenting. It may be the biggest bag of all! You have a constant restless mind: I didn’t do this right; I didn’t do enough; I’m being a pansy and need to be a disciplinarian; it’s all my fault; where did I go wrong?

Is there any worry like a parent worry? We are responsible for this person. One childhood is all they get. They absorb all the hours, imitating what they have seen. God help us now! Every mother I know worries that she is not doing this right. I ask myself almost daily…am I a good mom? It’s like a stab in the dark. Here is what I have learned. We exaggerate our failures and ignore our successes. I would never evaluate another mother’s lows and neglect her triumphs, so why do I do it to myself? Why do any of us do that?

If you are worried about being a bad parent, you are probably a good one. You, like many parents, are doing good stuff all the time—the loving words, attending all the games, attending the recitals, attending the programs, applying Band-Aides, pretending our kids’ art is pretty, the endless attention, the eye contact, the praise, reading to our kids, tucking our kids in to bed and kissing them good night. We do all of that, and that is good.

We also do the less obvious in our homes—the apologies, the conflict resolution, the tough love, the boundaries, the hard lessons. We are molding a failure into a character, both kids and ours.

Let’s be real. Every kid blows it. Every kid comes unhinged. Every family goes off the rails. That doesn’t mean we are ruined, it means we are ordinary. Course correction is standard.

Bottom-line: You are doing a better job than you think. Motherhood is not knitting and singing hymns all the time. If that’s our standard and every deviation produces a guilt trip, we will never get out of the baggage claim at the airport! Baggage claim will be our new residence. Remember this: not every moment is a big-ticket moment; not every conversation builds self-esteem.

Tool: Shame is not God’s tool; condemnation is a decoy of the enemy. Eliminate your negative self-talk and stop being a slave to it. Build up your inner monologue and start nurturing yourself. It’s time to move back to grace. You are doing a wonderful job. I want you to make a poster, or at least a sticky note, that says, “Grace-to-Self.” Post this everywhere until this becomes your inner dialogue and number-one mantra. Parenting is mind-numbingly hard and no one is perfect at it. Yet, somehow, against the odds, it will be enough. And remember every parent has a bag. Don’t be fooled. Swing your one bag over your shoulder, check the guilt, change your inner talk to “grace-to-me” and you will keep coming up higher.

#parenting