Acceptance: I 'm a Lousy Parent Sometimes

It's one of the great shocks of parenting to find ourselves yelling at or hurting our beloved children, when we never ever intended to do so. There are things they do that drive us nuts when they are little like whine, make messes, and fight with their siblings. When they are teens, they might talk back, dress inappropriately, get bad grades, disregard limits you have set, take risks, value their peers opinions over yours, push for independence, be too dependent (should I go on?). We each have our thresholds of what we can tolerate. If in your parenting journey, you find yourself reacting rather than responding, take time to explore your reactions and how they might relate to your past. Don’t judge yourself, accept that as a human being you have fears and things you need to work on.

The way we parent is greatly influenced by the experiences we had as children and teenagers with our own parents. More than by practicing specific strategies and techniques, we are better parents when we are aware of the ways in which our past impacts our present choices and behavior. Looking to your past doesn't mean blaming your parents or someone else for your present struggles; nor does it mean that we should feel guilty about our shortcomings. Blame and guilt have no place in the parent-child relationship. The world is not perfect, no person is perfect. We have all been parented imperfectly and we all parent imperfectly. By letting go of feelings of blame and guilt, we can accept ourselves and our children as we truly are. We can create honest, authentic relationships which are essential to the type of connection we all desire to have with our children and teens. You don’t need to be perfect to be emotionally connected to your teenager, you just need to be real.

Confession

Confession:   I’m a Football Mom

I admit it, I allow my fourteen year old son to play football.  In addition, I taxi him to and from practice, wash his uniform, and, under duress, attend his games.  In short, I enable. For some, this isn’t much of a confession.  In fact, when reading what other blogs had to say about tweens/teens playing football, I came across more than a few discussions on whether a parent should make their son play football.  Now, that was an eye opener.  My social circles are generally made up of highly educated, left leaning, better safe than sorry style parents.  Most of the mothers and many of the fathers forbid their sons to play football and made that decision before the sons were born.  I can certainly understand why.  Football is pretty brutal fare.  I never watch it on TV although I’ve had indirect exposure to it every fall for over 25 years, the length of my marriage.   My personal investment in football is nonexistent.  If I had my druthers, my son would swim, run, row, do any sport where there is no touching.  But he is a boy in the US, and a rather strapping lad at that, so despite my encouragement, guidance, and manipulation over the years, he wants to play football.

I have no fear that being a “football player” will turn Liam into an aggressive, insensitive, unintelligent lout.  His father played high school and some Division III college football and he turns that stereotype on it’s head.  It’s similar to when my sons were younger and played with sticks, toy guns,wooden swords, and the toy soldiers their grandparents repeatedly snuck into the house.  I knew they wouldn’t grow up to be war loving killers, and, so far they haven’t.

I am afraid that he will get hurt or that he will hurt someone else.  The fact is that serious injuries can take place on the football field.   I can argue that concussions and other injuries happen in all sports.  There is even evidence that forgoing team sports and engaging in individual recreational activities like bike riding, skateboarding, ice skating, and sledding may be even more dangerous www.wwgh.com/search/webpages/facts/sports .  Personally, I would never have a trampoline in my yard.  However, in making the decision to allow my child to be on a football team, I need to honest and acknowledge that statistics and common sense point to football being a riskier venture than most kid’s activities.  I also need to think about my child’s individual needs and personality style as well as the makeup of the team, the character of the coaches, and the values promulgated by the Pop Warner league.

Amazingly, there were discussions of football safety on both PBS http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sports/football-high/admist-concern-about-head-injuries-pop-warner-issues-new-practice-rules/  and NPR http://www.npr.org/2012/06/07/154509586/is-football-safe-for-young-players this past summer.  Of course, I caught both shows without even trying.   (I already told you about the circles I hang with).  I learned that Pop Warner www.popwarner.com has ramped up the safety requirements far beyond anything that has existed before.  Also, Pop Warner does not honor athletes for feats on the field, but they do give awards to football players and cheerleaders for academic achievement.  My son had to submit a report card with a C average in order to join. Liam’s coaches personify the terrific values espoused by the larger organization.  They are encouraging, patient, kind, fun, and fair when losing or winning.  They love both football and kids.  Liam, suffering from early adolescent angst, hormone driven aggression and moodiness, has benefitted enormously from the physically challenging workouts and the influence of his “Unlimited” team coaches.  He has come home banged up and bruised on the outside a few times, but inside, he couldn’t be better.

 

Vulnerable

          Brene Brown's The Wholehearted Parenting Manifesto posted on Huff Post Parents this past Sunday moved me and kept me thinking for days. I posted the Toni Morrison quote that Brown uses to put her parenting philosophy in a nutshell on Free World Parent's facebook page, "Let your face speak what's in your heart. When they walk in the room, my face says I'm glad to see them. It's just as small as that, you see?" It's just as small as that. It does sound so simple, so basic, so natural, but in actuality it's so hard for so many parents to do. We want “to light up” when our kids walk into the room, but instead, we become annoyed, overwhelmed, even angry. Is it because our children are messier, louder, more demanding than those of the parents with the naturally beneficent expression? Experience tells me no. Some of the messiest, loudest, most demanding children I know have parents who look upon them with a calm smile before taking care of the issue at hand in a good natured way and vice versa.

          I don't think it's the training. We can learn positive parenting strategies that can help reduce the chaos, but that loving glance must be authentic if we want our children to feel the full acceptance it is meant to imply. The Wholehearted-Parenting-Manifesto tells us that what we want our children to believe about themselves, we must believe about ourselves. We should love and have compassion for ourselves and accept our imperfections,. Again, easier said than done. How do we become such an evolved being? The key to that kingdom seems to be in the middle of the manifesto in the statements about vulnerability. We need to “learn how to be vulnerable” and “to honor our vulnerability.” But haven't we spent a lifetime putting guards up to keep our vulnerability at bay. Being vulnerable is scarey and emotionally painful, that's why we work so hard to avoid it. Maybe it's because our kids scratch at our vulnerabilities that we grimace rather than smile when they greet us with all of their imperfections.

          Even those parents who do light up when their mud covered 5 year old tramps into the living room, find themselves looking with disdain when their moody, hormonal, pimply, awkward 14 year old slumps into his chair at the dinner table. Yet doesn’t this complete manifestation of vulnerability scream out for compassion and acceptance. All the self-doubt that comes with adolescence is reinforced by that critical look given by the person they look to for warmth and shelter from the vagaries of the outside world. Perhaps if we can acknowledge that our adolescent children remind us of ourselves when we were excruciatingly self conscious, deeply fearful of rejection, mortified by burgeoning sexuality and changing bodies, we can let go of that critical inner voice that keeps us from fulling embracing ourselves and in turn, our children.