You Can Never Do Enough for Your Kids

I have a spot in my small home that I go to when I need a moment of peace from my children. Actually, let me rephrase that: I have a spot OUTSIDE of my small home that I go to when I need a moment. My kids have a reasonable amount of fun outside, but like most children, they enjoy screens much more and, generally, their screens are located inside.

For their allotted amount of screen time (which I assure you is reasonable, healthy, and approved by our pediatrician, child psychologist, and our mothers), I ditch the noise and sit on my porch swing. Most often I am watching or making videos in this spot, but some days, I stare into the void and ponder life as people jog by and dogs pee in my yard.

Recently I was staring into the void when I realized that I will never be able to do enough for my kids. I believe most parents know this to be true, but they act as if they could somehow do everything all their children need for the rest of their lives. We work tirelessly to provide for every want, we beat ourselves up when we fall short, and we feel guilty for taking ten minutes to scroll on our phones when we could be playing with our children.

We know we can never do everything our kids need, but we exhaust ourselves making the attempt. I don’t think it is wrong to do our best to be what our children want, but I do think we should guard ourselves from berating ourselves internally for how much we suck at being a parent.

Before I had children, I was confident in myself. The primary reason I felt so self-assured was because I avoided things I was terrible at. I learned early on that anything athletic was a quick way to embarrass myself. In the sixth grade (my final year of mandated physical education) we were playing flag football. I generally loved this activity because it was one of the easiest games in which to simply stand around and do nothing. I let the other children who aspired to play in the NFL run all over the place, and I stayed out of the way.

On this one day, however, I saw a moment where I could potentially garner some approval from my peers when the person carrying the ball foolishly ran right by me toward the end zone. My assumption was that this child knew my default play in this game was to stand out of the way of the action and watch people run by. In this moment, something came over me, and I decided to take the opportunity to be the hero, pulling this person’s flag on their way to a guaranteed touchdown. After successfully grabbing the flag, I felt a surge of shock and pride at foiling this person’s attempt to score. As I expected, he was angry at not getting to score, which I felt was normal. My elation came crashing down when the boy turned to me and shouted “you’re on my team!!.”

As you can imagine, twenty five years later this memory is still burned into my brain, and even now can bring up feelings of shame. This moment, combined with a few other similar failures, solidified early on that I should not do anything athletic. After a few years of never attempting any sport, my confidence grew as I stuck with the things I was good at; things like the calculator team, marching band, and debate. Namely, anything you could get made fun of for being good at, I signed up for. But over the years, by sticking to what I knew I could do well, I became self-assured in my abilities.

Unfortunately, once you become a parent, unless you are a truly terrible person, you can’t just not parent. You don’t get to realize that you suck at this and stop doing it without scarring multiple humans for life and/or getting arrested. So most of us stick with it, truly doing the best we can, but feeling like garbage most of the time.

At night after fighting children through the bed time routine and into bed, we find ourselves transitioning from rage to shame when we finally get a moment of peace. All we can think about are the moments during the day when we lost our temper and failed to regulate our emotions as we faced down the smallest and most stubborn people we have ever known.

Or maybe keeping your cool isn’t tough, but when reflecting on the day (usually as we stare at our phones or tvs to decompress) we realize how often we looked at our screens instead of focused on our children during the day. How many times did we say no when our kids asked to play with us? How many minutes did we waste scrolling social media when we could have been watching our children? The guilt for not giving them the attention they deserve starts to eat away at us as exhaustion takes over and we drift into sleep.

It is admirable to strive to better regulate our anger and emotions. Making choices to decrease our screen time and increase our ability to be present with our children is something most of us should seek to achieve. Doing things to be better parents is important. But beating yourself up along the way because you’re not doing enough for your kids is something we all should seek to release. Not only does it achieve nothing to tell ourselves how much we suck at parenting, but no matter how much better we become as parents, there will still be ways that we fail our children.

In fifteen years or so our kids will be hanging out with new friends or on a date and the conversation will turn to their childhoods. They will share things about their hometown, childhood pets, siblings and, inevitably, us. They will hopefully have plenty of kind things to say, but they will surely talk about the ways we let them down. How they remember us looking at our phones a lot. They will talk about how frequently we lost our cool or what things they did that would often trigger our anger. Our kids will share the ways we failed them while "trying our best.” They will recognize that most of us did what we could, yet we still let them down in some ways.

If I had a time machine that could take me to this moment where I would be able to eavesdrop on this conversation, take notes on all the ways I failed, and then come back to correct all the things they discussed, my children would still find themselves on that date or with new friends fifteen years later, and they would have a list of other things I could have done better. No matter how many times I tear through space and time to discover how I am failing my kids, I can never do enough to be everything they want me to be. I know this because as humans we are never satisfied.

The source of all my introspection on this topic as I sat on the porch swing earlier this week came from pondering this tweet that came across my feed:

No matter how much money a person makes, it appears they would not be at their happiest until they made more money. We all know money has a unique power that often doesn’t seem to satisfy like we would hope. Our appetites for cash often cannot be completely satiated. Although greed for money is not the same as a desire for attention from our parents, I can’t help but think that the desire for love and affection from our mothers and fathers functions in a similar way. No matter how attentive, kind, caring, and incredible our parents are, most of us, if truly pressed, could list off a few things we wish they would have done better.

One day, our kids will feel the same way. Regardless of how much effort we put into doing anything and everything we can think of to provide them with the love and affection for which they hunger, they will be disappointed in some aspects of our parenting. On one hand, a parent might use this as an excuse to stop trying. If we can never be everything they need, why not just do the bare minimum? I think most of us would agree that is not a healthy mindset to have, but I am here to argue that the opposite approach- working our butts off to do as much as we possibly can- is also not a healthy way to parent.

As with everything, there has to be a balance and, as with most other things, the only person who can define what is best for you in your situation is you. No one else understands the unique pressures you face, the temperament of your children, your own mental fortitude, or any number of other things you face in your parenting journey.

I am only here to argue that you should give yourself a break if you feel like you aren’t doing enough. Even if you were giving 100% more effort, your kids would still one day have at least a small list of ways in which you failed them. I believe seeking to make this list as short as possible is a great goal to have, but laying awake at night going over the ways you suck as a parent is a habit we all should seek to break.

Although I cannot tell you exactly how you should give yourself a break, in addition to our goal to be the best parents we can be for your kids, we must also seek to be the most kind person we can be to ourselves. When faced with the daily mental self-abuse, find creative ways to shut those thoughts down, count the ways you did well for your kids, and sleep soundly knowing that you should do your best, but you will never do enough, and that’s ok.