The past few days have been challenging for me as a parent. Everything worked out fine but I find myself always wondering how much I'm screwing these kids up? Really, as a parent, do you ever catch yourself thinking "oh crap!" I do. Sometimes on a daily basis.
When our kids are little, we are told to trust our instincts. Sure, if my child has a temperature, my instinct is to give her medicine or take her to the doctor. Or if they fall down, instincts have you kissing their boo boo and telling them everything will be alright. But at what point do you have to take a minute and question those same instincts? Like when your middle school daughter comes home with hurt feelings over something a nasty girl said to her? Do you trust your instincts and go tell the little snot off at recess? Um, no. What I really wanted to say to my daughter was "That girl is a little beotch and karma is gonna get her" but as a parent, I held my "instincts" in.
While raising children, we make a lot of mistakes. Luckily, all the ones we make while they are babies, they aren't going to remember. Your child isn't going to remember the time he had a blow out diaper and you almost puked, so you just cut the onsie off of him and threw it away. He won't remember the time you cut his little toe nail too short and you were sure he was gonna bleed out so you stuck his toe in a bowl of flour so it would "clot" faster because that's what the vet told you to do with your dog. She won't remember the time you got a rubber band stuck in her hair so you had to cut a small section out and pray her curls would cover it. But she will remember how you react when she's 11 and her feeling are hurt. She'll remember the words you said to make her feel better and the way you hugged her and let her cry it out while you tried to hold in your own tears because you hate to see her so disappointed.
People say actions speak louder than words but they forget to tell you that words often hurt much worse than actions. My parenting instincts kick in and I want to make everything better for my kids. But does solving all their problems for them really help them in the long run. Sure, we both probably would have felt better if we told that girl off, but luckily, we didn't. There were actually several things I wanted to do but I did nothing. I was patient and just hoped that it would work it self out. I trusted my instincts that I had raised my daughter well enough that she would be able to handle the situation herself. And you know what, she did.
So I guess when Axl Rose sang his G&R hit song and said "Woman take it slow, and it'll work itself out fine...all we need is a little patience" he may have knew what he was talking about. But I will trust my instincts not to take any other parenting advice from him.
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