I don’t take it lightly.
I would venture to say that if parenting feels easy every second of every day, if there is never a moment when we feel like locking ourselves in the bathroom for just a breath, or 50 of them, if we never wish for that tiny split of a split-second that they would be different people, we are probably doing it wrong.
The best parts of life take hard work, dedication and perseverance, and the things most worth doing will, at any moment in time, feel hard. That’s how I know I’m on the right track as a parent.
I know because, for me, parenting feels hard every time my 8-year-old forgets how he’s been taught to handle his anger and lashes out with hands instead of words, because he’s always been a gifted kid whose emotional development lags behind others his age, and we’ve worked really, really hard trying to walk him toward a place of control, knowledge and healthy expression of all the emotions, not just the good ones, and sometimes it just feels like a losing battle. It feels hard when I remember what a brilliant, kind and loving little boy he is and how much good he has the potential to blast into the world, if only he didn’t have this one little thing. It feels hard when I see that school number on my cell, and I wonder if it’s him they’re calling about.
Parenting feels hard every time the 3-year-olds eat a tube of toothpaste and leave the evidence on the counter, because I have to choose not to yell and instead use my words in ways that will honor, teach, and show grace and love even in this disciplinary moment that’s happened a billion times already. It feels hard when the 6-year-old wakes up on a school morning and barfs all over the Hot Wheels the 3-year-olds dumped out, not just because now it means cleaning all of that up, but also because no mother wants to see her baby sick. It feels hard every time the 5-year-old comes home from school and talks about how one of the boys in his class was mean to him on the playground, because then I just want to scream at the bullying kid, but instead I have to talk to my boy about how the people who choose to bully often don’t know any better and need to be shown a better way of making friends, and he’s the one who will have to do this brave, kind and world-changing work.
Parenting feels hard when they forget who they are. It’s hard because I love so much, because I want to order their worlds just so, because I want to make their decisions for them, because I don’t want to sit by and watch those consequences break their hearts, but I have to, because it’s the only way they’ll learn, grow and stumble back to who they are.
Sometimes I don’t feel up to this task. Sometimes I don’t feel equipped. Sometimes I want to give up, but I also know that I’m a fighter. I persevere. I keep going, which is kind of the point of all this parenting in the trenches—to show us what we’re made of. And you know what? I’m made of some pretty tough stuff.
So, no, I’m not going to suck it up, buttercup, because I have discovered something else in my eight years with these delightful little boys: Parenting is hard because I’m doing it right. Because I fail. Because they fail. Because we keep going, all of us together, along the road toward wholehearted living.
There is nothing greater in the world than this.
***
This article originally appeared at CrashTestParents.com.
