Mothering Monday: Against Good Parenting

Against Good Parenting

Parenthood, they say it’s the highest of callings, the noblest of professions. I always thought that was true and maybe it is. After all, there are not many other jobs for which a person would willingly wipe noses and other moist and stinky body parts, for a boss who never stops demanding and from whom a paycheck never comes; a job where the only room for advancement comes at the cost of sagging body parts, graying hairs, depleted bank accounts, and adult children who, (hopefully) finally start to appreciate you when you have one foot in the grave.

But then, there are also few careers that can give a person the boost that two little arms can, when they are thrown open wide and wrapped around your knees after a long day of work. Or the sense of pride and fulfillment that seeing a child excel can give; when they ace the test, or get the part, when they get the date, or fess up to the mistake, the swellings of parental pride bubble up like hot cocoa on an icy Colorado night. And in what other forum can a person preach all they want to an audience who has no choice but to listen and adore you, (at least for the first ten or so, years of their lives)?

I’m not against parenting, I am a mom and it’s one of the things that defines me. But that’s part of the problems: I am defined by my children and their choices.  That’s a problem because I have learned from my first seventeen years of chasing after these kids, that there are no guarantees. That no amount of doing it ‘by the book,’ or even by my gut will ensure anything about the future or the choices of the children I’m raising.

I’m not against parenting, but I do however, reject the general idea that good parenting results in good children. Children who obey, are socially and emotionally well adjusted, who turn out to be compassionate and contributing adults. I reject the idea that I should be – can be – graded, measured, judged by the outcome of this parenting project that are my kiddos.

It’s just too complicated for that kind of thinking.

And maybe you have all figured this out before me. I have plenty to learn and experience still. None of my children are adults yet, so perhaps this ‘don’t-judge-me’ perspective is naïve. Perhaps I’m the only one thinking this way. Perhaps in twenty more years of parenting I will look back and laugh at this middle-of-the-parenting-road perspective.

Perhaps.

But from what I’ve learned so far, I have to concede that my parenting matters far less than my children’s individual choices. My parental influence does matter (I think), but I don’t think my success as a parent should be rated or graded on how my children ‘turn out’. Maybe this is because I’m parenting teenagers, maybe it’s because I don’t want to accept responsibility for my bad parenting. Maybe.

Some time ago, I sat in church on Mother’s Day and listened to a man express over the pulpit, gratitude for his wife. As he extolled her many, many, heavenly motherly virtues, I struggled with my five-year-old stepdaughter who seems to have been born with a propensity to either melt into a puddle of tears or explode into an arms and legs flying fit every time we enter a place of worship. That day she was on meltdown number three in that last forty minutes. With tears streaming down her freckled cheeks, she shoved her hand deep into the crayon bag, spilling a rainbow of colors and bits of wax-scented paper out onto the pew in front of which she was kneeling. Having exhausted plans A, B, and C, I ignored her hoping she’d figure it out and I went back to listening to the speaker and his apparently larger-than-life wife. But when my daughter’s whimpering became so loud that the people in the row in front of us began looking back as if to say, ‘Where is that child’s parent?’ I knew plan D had failed.

Mustering all the patience that she hadn’t yet sucked out of me, I bent close to her ear.

“You seem sad,” I said through a forced smile, “Is there a problem I can help you with?”

She kept her eyes fixed forward as she mangled the crayon bag, twisting it in her hands, frustration oozing from her fingertips. She shook her head almost imperceptibly. I offered an inward groan. This little girl! Complicated didn’t come close to describing her and all her big feelings. She often said no when she really meant yes, (like now), she refused to let me hug her problems away and to make matters worse, she often refused to talk to me at all. All of this compounded by the fact that I had missed the first three years of her life.

I had missed the baby bonding, the get-to-know-you time that I had taken for granted with my natural-born children. I was trying so hard to love this little strawberry-blond girl and wanted to treat her as my very own, but when she behaved in this way, I often felt disconnected from her; I didn’t understand why she was so grab-life-by-the-horns messy and angry, and why she complained so often, or why she would just simply shut down like someone pushed her “off” button whenever she felt big feelings. And so of course I made it about me. Every time I didn’t understand her behavior, I was reminded that she wasn’t really mine, for surely a biological mother would have a sixth sense to know how to get through to such a strong-willed, deep-feeling child, but I didn’t. And no amount of good parenting and determined effort seemed to matter. She would be who she chose to be. Period.

As the speaker droned on, I placed my hand on my daughter’s shoulder, hoping a gentle touch would soften her enough for me to get through.

She shook my hand away.

I took a deep breath and tried again. This time I picked up the discarded, half-peeled pink crayon that sat on the pew between us and held it out to her.

My peace offering.

With her head perfectly still, she glanced at me through her teary green eyes, then back down at the crayon. I scooted my open palm closer to her and after another moment she snatched the crayon from my hand, but she didn’t start coloring. I watched, hopeful, as she clutched the ‘wrong pink’ – the cause of the tears – in both of her hands. Each little fist wrapped around one end of the crayon. With one more eyes-only glance at me then back down at her hands, she snapped the crayon in two. And with the tiny popping sound of breaking wax, she somehow seemed to feel better.

 I swallowed my irritation. Destroying things. Why does she do that?

She stood up and scooted past me down the row, ignoring my outstretched offer for cuddles and climbed into my husband’s lap. I closed my eyes and tried to push comparisons of my first children – of how they responded to me, allowed me to help them – out of my mind as I refocused on the speaker.

The man stood clutching the pulpit with both hands, as though the description of his angel wife was too overwhelming for him to handle without support. “I’m grateful that my wife is such a wonderful mother. All of her hard work and good parenting is evident in the man that our son has become.” His words rang in my ears as I peered down the pew at my family; three natural-born daughters and two step-children that I was doing all I possibly could to love and offer good parenting to. It hadn’t been too long ago that I would have heard this man’s comment and taken it as a given. Yes. Of course, good parenting yields good children. Of course, a ‘good’ son grown into a ‘good’ man means his mother was a ‘good’ parent right?

But becoming a step-parent and simultaneously entering the world of parenting teenagers, has made me wonder. After all, I had offered my stepdaughter good parenting just now and she had rejected it. So, because she is a passionate big feeler and refuses to let me help and comfort her, I does that make me a bad parent? I knew the answer without thinking: Of course not. And I also knew that this man, although well-meaning in his compliments to his sweetheart, was perpetuating a pervasive lie that circulates like oxygen in the parenting atmosphere. It is the idea that all good things a child does or becomes is a direct or roundabout result of good parenting; ‘good’ parenting produces ‘good’ children. This is a fun idea, it makes us smile; it makes us parenty types feel fuzzy inside. See that good thing? That good kid? I did that. But there are several problems with this thinking. Several hiccups I’ve felt along my way.

One problem I see and feel is that if I take credit for the successes my children achieve, the awards, the talents, the honesty, the beauty, then by default I also need to claim responsibility for their failures. Oh, right. Those. It’s basic logic. If my good parenting is where their warm fuzzy choices come from then where do the lies, the tantrums, the laziness, the on and on…what about those choices?

Does it make sense to say I’m responsible for my child’s lies, mistakes, weaknesses?

Maybe.

But how many parents are willing to take a long hard look at the other side of their parenting? I know I don’t want to. How many times has a man stood in church and confessed to the congregation that his kids are messed up because of his bad parenting. I can see it now:

“My son is serving time in the slammer and it’s all because I ignored him when he was young.”

Or

“My daughter’s a real brat cause my wife is such a screamer…”

No, that’s not how it goes, even if it’s the truth we don’t own those things, let alone confess them in public. And I will say there is the issue of social convention to consider. The entire congregation would writhe like larvae in discomfort with an announcement like this. I’m not saying this is a good idea. I’m a fan of being polite, helping others feel comfortable and all that, but the idea of a confession like this does tease out the connection between social expectations and why we do what we do as parents. How we judge others for the weakness and the failures we refuse to see, (or maybe see all too clearly…) in ourselves.

Like that woman in the grocery store that time, the one with the snotty-nosed toddler whose screaming from three isles over vibrated bubbles through the two-liter organic soda you had just put in your cart. And you passed another woman in the isle and caught her eye for less than a fractional second, but it was long enough for you to know she was thinking the same thing. ‘lady, can’t you even calm your own kid down?’ How you were both thinking: bad parenting…screaming child.

But then at some point you are that lady with the screaming kid and suddenly you’re on display. You can feel every eye on you sizing up your skills, and you’re pretty sure you have a ticker tape running right above your head of all the parenting failures of your life. And your kid screams and writhes against the red straps of the shopping cart no matter what you say or do or bribe or threaten and you want to shout, “I didn’t teach her this! I’m a good mom! And the ice cream in your cart starts to melt, tear shaped drops of mint and chip oozing out the corner of the carton. And on the inside you’re thinking, ‘I’m failing, I’m failing, I’m failing,’ as you walk out of that store and hide your child’s behavior for a little while longer.

But then fast forward a decade or so and you’re the lady driving the car with your delirious suicidal teenager in the passenger’s seat intermittently screaming at you and passing out. You’re trying to keep your wits about you and your eyes tear-free long enough to get her to the hospital. And she’s wailing and moaning all the way up to the emergency room from the hospital parking lot. You can hide nothing now and you don’t try, because all you can think about is half carrying her from the car. Your child who has tried to take her own life. You’re holding on to her so tightly that you might leave marks on her arms, her body, your arm wrapped around her waist, because every time you let go she tries to run away. And even years later you will go cold when you remember her shouting and crying and pleading with you to let her go so she can ‘become angel.’

This time everyone really is staring as you stumble with your adult-sized child up the stairs, to the ER check-in counter, but by now you don’t care about that ticker tape of your failures, or even about whether this is your fault, all that matters is getting her to a safe place where she can’t hurt herself again; getting her somewhere safe so that you can try to figure out how to get her the treatment she needs to heal.

And then the nurse is banding your daughter’s wrist with her name and birthday and strapping her to a wheelchair and your daughter is screaming and crying and reaching for you, pulling and pushing against the black straps. Her eyes are glass, and they take her to a secured room, the kind with a lock only on the outside. And while you settle in a cold plastic chair in the waiting room, you’d give almost anything to be that woman dealing with the toddler tantrum in the cookie isle again. And if you could go back, you’d just buy the stupid cookies.

The Bible says that if we train up a child in the way he should go that when he’s old, he will not depart from it. And that makes me wonder if Solomon ever raised kids that actually were ever teenagers. Granted it does say, when they are old they won’t depart from it. So I guess for my kids there’s still time. But do parents really have that much influence? And what about those kids who don’t follow the way they’ve been trained, for good or for ill. What about my childhood friend, I’ll call her Anne, whose dad was never around and whose mom blew through boyfriends and jobs like I blow through tissues when I have a cold. What about how Anne cared for her younger brother because her mom wouldn’t. Took him to church, or how she loved and forgave both her parents, how she rejected the idea that families have to be broken. How she refused to drink even when her mom was the one offering the glass. She’s pushing forty now, my friend. We’re still in contact. She’s what most people would label as a ‘good’ person. She’s faithful to her husband of seventeen years, honest, kind and flawed, but keeps trying every day. What about her? What if she hadn’t departed from the way her parents trained her? Wasn’t it good that she let departed from all the things they’d taught her? Why do the parents get all the credit? Get all the blame?

Parenthood, with all its spit-up stained shirts and driver’s training induced wrinkles is, I believe, a pretty high and noble calling. The feeling of holding a brand-new human in your arms who is still moist and pink from growing inside of your body for months, is for many, like the mythical and magical romantic love at first sight. There is something so pure and perfect in that tiny bundle and when you know that all that perfection came from you, it is easy to misunderstand, to take credit for the beauty of it. It is easy to love a perfect miniscule version of yourself.

But what about the not so perfect and in fact rather mouthy and often disrespectful fourteen-year-old who runs away to live with her dad? She’s mine. Does this choice she made cancel out the fourteen years of good things I’ve taught her? The fourteen years of apologizing when I made mistakes, of modeling and teaching honesty? Does it cancel out the time and listening I gave her? That doesn’t make sense to me. That was good parenting. Or what about the Seventeen-year-old who tried to commit suicide last year and has been in a treatment center since then? She’s mine too. She’s taller than me now and even though we share the same face she’s no longer a tiny version of me, but does her illness mean I failed somehow? Does her struggle mean I wasn’t strong enough? Didn’t give enough? And then there’s the Fifteen-year-old who tries so hard to be respectful, to get good grades, to be a good friends and sister. Do these efforts mean I did something right with her? I succeeded? A+ to me?

There is only a span of three years between these three; they were raised the same way by the same parents; yelled at and snuggled and apologized to by the same mother, abandoned by the same father. They even look so much alike, people have a hard time telling them apart. All olive skinned and brown eyed. And people compliment me on my daughters’ beauty, “they get it from their mom!” I nod. Compliment me on their accomplishments, “Junior class president? Some good parenting going on there!” I smile. But no one ever says, “Man, you have a suicidal daughter? Where did you mess up so badly?” Or “You really blew it as a mom to have your daughter run away to live with her deadbeat dad.” But we think it about others and those pervasive thoughts and summing up of other parents’ efforts leak into our own self-worth as well. A red shirt snuck in with the whites and soon we’re a dingy unnatural blush, wondering how we screwed up so big.

I’m not suggesting we should blame in this way, but the double standard is stark. We want to claim the good and ignore the bad because we are egotistical self-centered organisms, and it is natural food for our egos to see ourselves in the good our children do. Maybe because we want so badly to find evidence that what we do day-in and day-out actually makes a difference; evidence that says we’re worth something.

But it takes a much more humble and self-critiquing parent to own up to the bad and how they have contributed to that; to own the mistakes. And an even more balanced parent to be able to love and teach their children without taking credit for their offspring’s choices either way; to stop confusing responsibility with ownership. Teach that kid, sure, but in the end, be willing to admit that their choices for good or ill, the very outcome of their lives just might have more to do with their own choices than anything you have done.