A few months ago I wrote a post about this book I read called Daring Greatly by Brene Brown.
http://Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead https://a.co/d/1xvfaPv
I separated Brown’s book into 2 parts because the parenting part really spoke to me because I’m currently in the trenches. And if you are a parent, I suggest getting this book to just read that chapter if nothing else.
What would be ideal is reading this book as young as you possibly can and before you have children. There are things in here that really made me stop and think and I wish I could’ve reflected on them earlier in life.
“The uncertainty of parenting can bring up feelings in us that range from frustration to terror”
Brene Brown
Ain’t that the truth. There are so many feelings a parent feels in one day. Just the other day my kid had a real up and down kinda day. He was grumpy, he was whiny, he was mean, he was cute, I loved him, wanted to run away from him, felt bad for him, wanted to just cuddle him and give him everything his little heart desired. It was exhausting feelings all these feelings.
“That’s why parents are so critical of one another–we latch on to a method or approach and very quickly our way becomes the way. When we obsess over our parenting choices to the extent that most of us do, and then see someone else making different choices, we often perceive that difference as direct criticism of how are are parenting”
This made me stop and think because we all do it. Guilty. That little quick judgment as you’re scrolling Instagram or walking by someone in the store. And I don’t think it’s done maliciously or intentionally but it is some food for thought reading that quote.
It’s natural to hold tight to what you know because the unknown is scary (parenting is scary). Or learning that you did something wrong is scary to admit (oh shit I really fucked that up, gotta go back and change my approach). Making choices as a parent is very personal and most of the time we feel personally attacked if someone questions us. The only thing we can do is be a little more conscious of it and give others and ourselves some grace. And stop and think, is it really an attack or is someone just offering their help and perspective?
And I think parents need to be more open in sharing information with each other. You never know if there is something out there you can learn but first we need to make it ok to say to each other ‘I don’t know about X, do you?’. I try to read about things and ask other people what they are doing but a lot of times it just seems like people are guarded like they don’t want to share their secrets. I love taking everyone’s opinions and ideas and picking out what would work for me and my child. You don’t have to follow things 100% but I think people do need to be more open in saying, ‘hmm I’ve never thought of that before” or “that’s an interesting way of doing things”.
How nice does it feel when someone goes “I’m really struggling with X” and another person goes “me too! Isn’t it the fucking worst?! I want to pull my hair out” as oppose to “No I’ve never had that problem and everything is fine”. Makes me feel like damn, I must be doing a shitty job. Even to the most secure of us.
I’ve heard so many people lie and say everything is great and flowers and rainbows and I KNOW it is not. Parenting, in this day and time, is an adventure and a juggling act. Not every day is rainbows and if anyone tells you that, I call bullshit. And in the rare instance I am wrong, that person needs to hold a seminar and give us all the secret to their success.
“As Joseph Chilton Pearce writes, ‘what we are teaches the child more than what we say, so we must be what we want our children to become’”
We must try to make our children better than we are and that can’t happen if we don’t first understand our faults and our limitations.
If you are aware enough, you can think back to how you were raised, and think about instances or scenarios where your parents were only doing or acting as they knew how. And it might not have been the best approach. And you now have to undo what was done to you to be better for YOUR children. But we don’t just carry our own baggage throughout life. We have those closest to us hold it for a little while, or add something to their bag to alleviate a weight for ourselves. And if we don’t deal with that baggage, we perpetually keep transferring it—our grandparents gave it to our parents, our parents gave it to us and here we are fucking some more shit up.
I’ve always said I wanted to be better than my parents were. And that’s not a dig, or a negative, I would hope that they would want me to be better as well. Just as I want my son to be kinder, and more thoughtful, and braver than I am. We can’t model the right behavior to our children if we don’t first understand what is wrong and then strive to be the better versions of ourselves. As Brene says, “…if we want our children to love and accept who they are, our job is to love and accept who we are. We can’t use fear, shame, blame, and judgment in our own lives if we want to raise courageous children”.
“…perfectionism is not teaching them how to strive for excellence or be their best selves. Perfectionism is teaching them to value what other people think over what they think or how they feel. It’s teaching them to perform, please, and prove.”
I used to call myself a perfectionist but after reading this I’m sure I’m not. I don’t want to be the best to prove something to someone else. I don’t care for praise or getting my name on a list. I do it to beat myself mostly, because I like being better and getting better (that’s probably called something else). But there is a fine line for sure. There are a lot of kids from the Tiger Mom generation that are messed up. They need others approval, they need to be liked, they need constant validation, and they cannot self regulate their emotions. Rampant anxiety everywhere. At some point, we have to look back at the cause. At the pressure. To the reason WHY. Why they feel the need to perform for others, because that is a perfect description of it: a performance. But for who? Because when you ask those people, it’s not for themselves when they go to sleep at night. They’re thinking about how they can make someone proud of them based on their accomplishments instead of being satisfied with who and what they are.
And if that is something that happened to us in childhood, wouldn’t we want to stop it from happening to our children? What does excite me about my generation of parents is that a lot of people are starting to get on board with Conscious Parenting (awareness, connectedness, and mindfulness)—-self reflecting and changing our behaviors and approaches to make better kids and not repeat the mistakes of the past. I think part of this is that people are having children later in life. I’ve very different from what I was at 28 and 21. Can you imagine having a child at 21? There are so many things I’ve learned since then, so many ways I became a better person. I would’ve done a disservice to that child. We would’ve just been surviving instead of THRIVING.
“…children are not learning how to handle adversity or disappointment because we’re always rescuing and protecting them…It’s not that our children can’t stand the vulnerability of handling their own situations, it’s that we can’t stand the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure, even when we know it’s the right thing to do”.
She says that the parents who usually bring this up as a problem are the ones who are always “intervening, resuing, and protecting”. Can this account for the anxiety and forced perfectionism? The lack of resilience and grit in this younger generation? Those parents are so adamant about not letting their kids feel the hurt or struggle they felt, that they don’t even realize that the adversity is what contributed to making THEM who they were. But for some reason they feel the need to rob their own children of this, thinking that they’re just helping them.
Toni Morrison gave the best advice because of course she did: “[she] explained that it’s interesting to watch what happens when a child walks into a room. She asked, ‘does your face light up?’ She explained, ‘when my children used to walk in the room when they were little, I looked at them to see if they had buckled their trousers or if their hair was combed or if their socks were up…You think your affection and your deep love is on display because you’re caring for them. It’s not. When they see you, they see the critical face. What’s wrong now?’…Let your face speak what’s in your heart. When they walk in the room my face says I’m glad to see them”.
Mic dropped. It’s the little things we don’t even realize we’re doing. Our face, our words, have such an impact. Think of your own life. A person could say just one thing to you that you can remember 20 years later. How do we want our kids to remember us? I try to think about this all the time when I’m losing my patience or just want to snap—-is this a moment in time that he will remember 20 years from now? Is this something that I can fix now that I have the chance?
This makes me think of this lady who would drop off her kid in the morning. He must’ve been like 4-5 years old. And the first thing she would say while rushing out of the car was “hurry up! Why are you walking so slow. Ugh. I have to get to work”. And as I was slowly getting my child out of the car I thought, ‘well, it’s not his problem. Why didn’t you leave earlier?’. The one thing I try to be mindful of are little moments like that. It’s those little moments. I want my son to remember that every morning we stand outside of school and wait until the bus passes by because it makes him happy. I leave the house earlier than we have to to make sure we have that time. I don’t want the last thing he remembers to be me yelling at him or rushing him along as I drop him off with strangers all day. And I am the first to admit it is hard to be in the moment and stay in the moment when everything is happening. I have a small reserve of patience and I have my moments of AHHHHH but I make it a point to try to be as mindful as possible and the only thing we can do is to try our best.
She talks about the “difference between you are bad and you did something bad” and says “If a child tells a lie, she can change that behavior. If she is a liar–where’s the potential for change in that?”
That’s another thing that’s so small that we can be aware of. The words we use or what we imply with those words have a major impact. And if you know Dr. Becky, who is all the rage now, her book and platform focuses on the GOOD INSIDE. Not the bad.
Brown gave an example of her daughter who was using glitter at school and her teacher said “Ellen! You’re a mess” and Ellen responded with “I may be making a mess, but I’m not a mess”.
This may be the hardest thing to do right, because sometimes the words we use or the phrases are not meant to be malicious or hold the weight they do, but we have to remember when speaking to children, they are learning. They may not understand sarcasm or certain humor. They may carry our words throughout their lives.
FINAL THOUGHTS
There are so many good little nuggets of wisdom and thinking in this book, but I will leave you with this on her parenting philosophy:
“I’m not perfect, and I’m not always right, but I’m here, open, paying attention, loving you, and fully engaged”.
We can only ask to strive for that for the sake of ourselves and our children.
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Life With Purpose (And Other Things) 