Many times as parents we are reminded just what a huuuuge responsibility being a parent is, and how muuuuch we influence our children's lives (duh). For many of us, this causes us to reflect a lot on how we want to be as parents, and how we want to be as people. We choose "a way", a parenting "style", we read books, attend classes, have debates with like (and not so like ) minded parents, write articles and blogs about it (!).
Many times we make parenting a way of life.
Then comes the day when your child doesn't do what you want them to do. The fuss, scream, have tantrums, give up piano lessons, swear at you, break your stuff, refuse your organic food, and eventually become chavs or bankers... where did I go wrong, we ask? You were supposed to become a vegetarian, flute-playing, pacifist carpenter? And you, you were supposed to be a ground-breaking, documentary activist, changing the world! I cooked you organic food, paid through the nose for an alternative education, I breast fed you until you were 3, co-slept with you for 9 years, damnit!
The "investment" of rearing children is huge. Aside from the financial aspect we jeopardise our relationships, careers, and irreversibly change (I prefer that word to "ruin") our bodies. What would that all be for if we didn't get something back?
We invest all we can and we expect rewards: well balanced, HAPPY, healthy, emotionally aware, ethical, environmental, peaceful, creative children... WOAH. What a burden.
But the eventual truth of parenting is that you may never get something back, and that you just have to swallow. They may never say thank-you.
It could be more useful to focus what we can give to each child at a particular time, not martyre ourselves against our kids and then take it out on them emotionally when they don't live up to whatever standards we have outlined. So if you can manage organic food and giving them 5-a-day this week, great. If it's beans on toast and a vitamin, that's fine too. If you can afford an expensive school right now and you like it, do it. If you can't, don't re-mortgage your house to do so, in the long run (measured by parental stress) it's simply not worth it.
It takes children to humble what many of us see as success or failure. With my first child I did everything "right": I did pregnancy yoga, ate right, had a homebirth, co-slept, breastfed... and had a fat, happy little baby that I carried around in a sling all day, thinking - clever me!
With number 2 I also birthed at home, carried in a sling, breastfed on demand, co-slept and she cried to high hell for the first 3 months. It brought me down a peg or two, and helped me to see that what we do (be it co-sleeping or paying for an expensive education) has to come from a desire to do it because you can, and should be independent of the end result (a quiet baby, an outstanding career).
It's called accepting ourselves as parents, out limitations, letting go of those ideas of perfection, and accepting our kids too, be they carpenters, chavs, documentary makers or bankers.
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