How Old is the Parent?

We are often asked, "How old is your baby? It's a sweetly intentioned question and one we can usually answer easily (depending on our current level of sleep deprivation!). An equally pertinent question is, "How old is the parent?" 

For some reason, we think that upon the arrival of our child, we somehow become fully-formed parents even if our baby is a newborn. Parenthood grows, like the development of a child, through phases and stages of change. When your child is a newborn human being, are you a newly born parent--exploring the new world, seeing it for the first time through parent-eyes. It makes sense to think of new parents as newborns. They need much of the same care and attention a newborn baby needs--warmth, attention, food, sleep, and total acceptance that they are not yet crawling let alone walking! 

We would never think to yell at a newborn for not knowing how to crawl.  And yet, we can berate ourselves viciously in the midst of our innocence as new parents.

What if instead of expecting ourselves to arrive as fully-formed parents, we looked on with the wonder of witnessing something completely new finding its way in the world? Imagine watching ourselves unfold into parenthood with the curiosity and awe we feel as our children learn new skills for the first time.

Our development continues far beyond the newborn phase. My own children are teenagers and my experience of myself as a parent is far from new. Even still, each new phase of parenthood is a developmental milestone for the parent. This is my first time as a parent of a child applying to college. This is my first experience of having two kids in high school with all its changes and unique challenges. These are my current developmental phases of parenthood. They are new and unfamiliar. I am no longer a newborn parent, as my identity as a mother feels well established. But each new phase still brings with it a period of adjustment, learning, and stretch...as it does for my kids.

One of the big differences between the developmental phase of newborn parenthood and older milestone crossings is communication. At this point, with teenagers, I can and do verbalize the stretch as I feel it. I often say to my kids, "This is new for me. I'm going to have to take a bit to figure out how I feel about it and what I want to do." They don't have to accept that and sometimes push against my request for patience. That's sort of their job, to test and push my boundaries...it's a developmental phase! Asking for time and verbalizing my need to let the change, stretch, or phase settle a bit for me is a practice I've worked on over my nearly 18 years of being a parent.

This practice can start as a newborn parent. Try verbalizing to your non-verbal baby what you need, or maybe just speak inside your own head, either will work. For example, if your baby is crying and you don't know what to do say, "I hear you are upset and I'm having a tough time figuring out what you need. Give me a minute to see if I can figure it out." Regardless of whether you say it out loud or inside your own head, it is a practice to ask for and take the necessary time to step across a developmental threshold in your own parenting journey. 

You aren't really asking your baby for this space and time. You are asking yourself to be patient with yourself. You are reminding yourself that you are facing something new and unfamiliar. 

You are not expected to know how to handle every situation the first time you face it or even the tenth! When learning to walk, toddlers fall down a LOT. And, they keep trying...they pick themselves up and try again...over and over and over again.

Here's to cheering ourselves on as we learn to walk as parents. We will learn how. Then we'll move on to running, climbing, jumping, and swimming.

The phases continue. Patience and resilience are required. If you don't already have them in spades, parenthood is a crash course in both!

If you would like to receive more articles like this or to join my newsletter, please subscribe here. 

If you would like to read the rest of the newsletter from which this blog was extracted, click here. 

Parenting Do-Overs

It doesn't rain much where I live, but on one particular day over a year ago, it had rained hard all night and was still drizzling in the morning. As Murphy's Law demands, I had had my carpooling, road tripping, overused, 7-seater finally washed...just before it rained. I don't get my car washed very often and I LOVE my car when it's clean. It is also important to this story to know that my teenager likes to put his shoes on in the car rather than in the house before walking to the car (can you see where I'm heading...). On this particular rainy morning, my son walked through the puddles and residual stormy muck to the car holding his shoes in his hands so he could put them on in the car. Once loaded up, he didn't like the wetness and grime on the bottom of his feet, so he wiped them on my clean dashboard. FULL STOP!

I lost it. I blew my top with some high volume content! My stunned teen simply paused, looked at me, and said, "Mom, it's just dirt."

As a parent, I have asked for many parenting do-overs. I see reacting as very different from responding. Reacting is often impulsive and lacks the extra few beats of time required to think things through. Responding is more thoughtful and less emotionally charged. When I behave in a way that is impulsive, reactionary, and emotional rather than thoughtfully responsive, I long to be able to do it over. But let’s face it; there will always be moments of reaction even if we wish we could only be thoughtfully responsive. We’re human and parenting is hard!

I recently read a wonderful blog post by Janet Landsbury entitled, "Parent Do-Overs – 7 Confidence Building Responses." When I first read the title, I thought it would be about something different; how to do parenting do-overs rather than how to do it better the first time around. The seven responses she shares are really good, just not what had me opening the blog. But the idea got my blog-writer going, so rather than wish her blog had been about the topic I wanted to read, I thought I'd write it myself. 

Many years ago, when my kids were much younger than they are now, I began a new “do-over” practice in my parenting. After a reaction that was less than thoughtfully handled, I would usually come to a point a few seconds, minutes, hours, or even days later and think to myself, “whoops, I wish I had handled that differently.” That thought is my signal to head back into the situation with my child and do it over. My next step is to talk about what happened and how I reacted. I like to separate my reaction from the content of my message. Usually, the need to correct the behavior is on point, but my reaction can be an overreaction. I’m a fiery woman and when I’m stressed or deeply concerned, my reaction can be bigger than I intend. My opening lines are usually something like, “I would like to talk about what just happened and how I reacted.” Sometimes, I will even say, “I’d like a do-over to try and respond better this time.”

In the instance of the clean car/dirty feet, my kid's statement brought my overreaction to my awareness rather quickly, in part because he didn't meet my overreaction with a defensive attitude. Instead, he just brought to my attention how disproportional my reaction was to the offense. It's rare that this awareness happens as quickly at it did this time. And still, I had to take a few deep breaths in the moment to be able to move from reaction to response. I clearly needed a do-over. 

First, I apologized for my overreaction and owned that it was too big for the severity of the transgression.  Then, I addressed the content.  This takes a few extra steps. 1) Speak about the action and how I felt about it. 2) Discuss what I needed him to do instead. 3) Share what about the behavior was unacceptable. 

Often our reactions come off as personal attacks rather than about the behavior itself. Do-overs work best when we address the behavior, as well as our feelings and needs.  I find separating my reaction from the offensive action of my kids works better to educate and correct behavior while helping to leave the personal relationship intact. 

It is my belief that overtly stating the need for a do-over with our children helps teach them many things about being human. I hope that my kids have learned and continue to learn that we all make mistakes. And, that owning our mistakes with humility is important. We will try to do better next time and we can even try again this time. Making mistakes is normal and catching ourselves as quickly as possible, owning the mistake, and trying to do better are vital lessons for growth and learning.

We all mess up. That’s part of being human. There is NO way to always do it the best way on our first try (as if there is some quantifiable “best way” anyway!). But that doesn’t let us off the hook entirely either. We need to also notice when we are less than skillful in our parenting or when our reaction doesn’t match the situation, or when we wish we had said something different in the moment.

When children are really young, we can ask for do-overs with our partners or friends. We can say things like, “I just handled a situation with my child in a way that doesn’t feel right. Can I try a do-over with you, so I see how that might feel different for next time?” Do-overs are a wonderful way to learn and grow as parents and as people. I ask for do-overs with my husband too! Now that my kids are teenagers, do-overs are a normal part of our conversations. They help us separate reactions (mine and theirs) from the content of the needed dialogue.

Here’s to doing our best and owning our missteps too. How do “do-overs” work in your family?

Holiday Treasures and a Family-Infused New Year!

Part of our New Year's Eve involved packing up the holiday decorations. As we only had a very small artificial tree this year due to location, I had to be highly selective about which decorations I brought. I didn't go for fancy or beautiful or the most expensive, I chose the photo ornaments the kids painted each year when they were little and the ones they selected each year that hold memories (like the monkey ornament that's missing a foot because my youngest, who selected it while shopping at Cost Plus Market, thought the foot of said monkey tasted great!). 

I also brought the Star of David tree topper that I made out of cardboard, tinfoil, a chopstick and some ribbon the first year in our new home to honor my traditions and as well as my husband's. It was meant to be a temporary fix until we could find or make a better one, but now, 18 years later, we tenderly keep this homemade tree topper alive for another year...and hopefully another after that. When I asked my boys if we should bring the tree topper this year due to its fragile state, they exclaimed, "Of course!" As if the idea of NOT having it was blasphemy! This is how ordinary stuff becomes treasure. And the treasures are the only things that made the journey with us this year. 

Our year abroad taught us a lot about treasures and meaning and the insignificance of stuff. I'm deeply grateful on this New Year's morning for the lessons we gained that year and which continue to inform our family life. Spending NYE last night with our boys, talking, reflecting, and collectively as well as personally looking to our new year, set my heart and my family on firm ground for this new year. I'm not sure we would have done it, nor that our teenagers would have complied if not for the year we spent somewhat trapped together and learning that organic and forced family time nourishes all our souls. 

May the new year bring your family nourishing time together as well as nourishing time for each individual independently. At least for me, the two feed one another and make the other richer as a result of the pairing. And may you find and make treasures--from stuff embedded with meaning and treasured moments captured in memories forever. 

️

Happy New Year!