When I Become a Parent, My Kids Will Never...
I don’t think there is any task or job in the world that is more difficult to understand before you’re fully in it than parenting. You can babysit, nanny, and hang out with parents who have kids, but you cannot replicate what it is like to care for other humans day in and day out for years.
In the business world there are internships, job shadowing, and other temporary glimpses of a future career which might not get you the full picture of what that job is actually like, but if you end up hating those jobs after you come on full time, you can quit.
Parenting is something you cannot quit without causing trauma to multiple people.
Every person who ends up becoming a parent consciously or subconsciously walks into parenting with pre-conceived plans of what they will and won’t do as parents. Before welcoming children into their lives, they make plans and quietly set up non-negotiable standards and practices for when they have kids one day. But they don’t know how hard it is to implement those standards until they actually have the kids. But that doesn’t keep them from silently creating their list during their pre-kids life. When they’re out to dinner, they might see a family pass out iPads to the children and then think, “I will never let my kids have iPads at the table.”
They’re at a grocery store and they observe a child having a meltdown on aisle 7, screaming about a type of cereal they wanted that the parent said they couldn’t have. To stop the insanity, the parent quickly grabs the cereal, tosses it in the basket, and keeps moving as the kid starts to calm down. The pre-parent watching from down the aisle thinks to their self, “I will never let my kid do that to me. When I say ‘no’ I mean it!”
Maybe they know someone with kids who has completely been overwhelmed by endless kid activities. Baseball, music lessons, soccer, Boy Scouts, and a dozen other activities have taken over and the pre-parent thinks, “when I have kids, I will never let their activities take over like that. They will get one activity a week max and we’ll only choose activities that work with our schedule.”
I cannot judge these pre-parents because I, too, was stupid before having kids.
I had strong convictions about how much screen time my kids would have. I knew I would never let my kids speak to me with disrespect. I wasn’t going to let my kids interfere with my friendships or my personal time to pursue the things that were meaningful to me. I was just so stupid. I had no idea how you truly cannot know what you will and won’t do as a parent until you are eye balls deep in dirty diapers and baby toys. I did not know that handing out iPads at a restaurant was sometimes the only way to get fifteen minutes of peace. I didn’t understand that choosing your battles with your kids would mean that occasionally you give them the cereal they were throwing a fit about in the middle of the grocery store. I never imagined that my schedule after work would be entirely dictated by activities we voluntarily signed our kids up for. I understand now that there are some standards and expectations that are simply unrealistic. So I have bent and even abandoned many of these things altogether.
The thing I’m beginning to struggle with is that there are certain rules and standards I am still passionate about as a parent that I wonder how strongly I can hold to as the years go on. In the same way I let go of things I assumed would be non-negotiable before having kids, am I destined to let go of everything I once thought important if faced with enough pressure? For example, I am passionate about keeping smart phones out of my kids’ hands until they are 16 years old. I have seen first hand how I have become addicted, and I want to shield them from the infinite access to damaging content, hurtful social media interactions, and a million other things. But as they grow older, and every other kid in their grade gets a smartphone, can I withstand the tears, the tantrums, and the anger from my kids as they grapple with what they believe is a stupid and meaningless restriction? My daughter’s favorite phrase is already “that’s not fair!” and she uses it with such frequency and without discretion, it is clear that she does not know what “fair” means. But she doesn’t like being told “no” about anything. As her childish obstinance turns into teenage vitriol, will I be able to stick to my guns?
Even now I am coming up against the pressures of sleepovers. For a variety of reasons I won’t go into here, I do not believe the potential good of a sleep over outweighs the potential harm. As a child I experienced the conversations and activities that can take place at sleepovers, and this was before smartphones and the internet. I cannot imagine the truly awful things my kids might see and experience in a home with a few other kids after the adults go to bed. My daughter has yet to be invited to a sleepover, but she talks about how other kids at school have mentioned them, and has begun asking to have friends over. Can I hold to my convictions as the pressure builds?
Is the resentment my kids will have toward me a price I will be willing to pay in the long term for their safety?
Ultimately we have to remember that we are parents to our children and not their friends, but that old platitude is a simplification of the issue. I’m not trying to be friends with my kids. My reticence to adhere to rules and standards I find important is not rooted in this need to have my kids like me. It’s much deeper than that. How do you know if you are being so strict that you are causing long term damage? I believe we all know someone that had strict parents as a child who, upon graduation, entered a chaotic era of trying anything and everything they could once they were out from underneath the oppressive hand of their parents. Can you die on parenting hills that are ultimately more damaging than helpful to the development of your child?
How on earth can you tell the difference between a rule that is vitally important and one that is simply a result of your own insecurities?
For those of us privileged enough to have parenting partners with whom we face the daily trials of raising children, you have a line of defense against enforcing unreasonable rules and restrictions. By having open and honest conversations about what you feel is important and why, you can work through what is reasonable and what isn’t. If they agree with you about the standard in question, then you don’t need to think much more about whether or not you should stick with it. If they disagree at first, but come to understand after you explain, then, once again, you have your answer. The standard you want to enforce is most likely reasonable. Finally, if your partner still disagrees after unpacking all the different reasons for the proposed standard, then maybe you are being unreasonable. Instead of just making a rule without consulting your partner, talking about the standard and why it’s important will either get you both on the same page, or will help you see if you’re being unreasonable.
For those going on the parenting journey alone (you are superheroes), you have freedom to implement rules and standards without having to consult another adult. In some ways, this is a luxury. You don’t face the burden of having to explain your choices to someone else, allowing you to make decisions and move on with your day. However, without the built in sounding board of a partner, you may not know if the rules you want to adhere to are more extreme than necessary. There is something helpful about defending and explaining your stance to someone else. Being forced to articulate what you believe can either solidify your decision, or expose areas where you are being unreasonable. Without a partner, you will need to find this elsewhere. Your own parents are a decent place to start, but this is not an objective relationship. Additionally, parenting challenges change drastically every 10 years or so. The further removed from parenting they are, the more skewed their advice and feedback will be. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask them for input, but just make sure you understand the frame in which they are working. Some principles are timeless, but not all are.
For the single parent, finding a community of others with whom you can build meaningful connections is vital. But with all the responsibilities falling on your shoulders alone, finding the time to make a few friends to bounce parenting ideas off of is basically impossible. If you don’t have natural relationships through work or with parents of other children in your kids’ school, then you will have to get creative. You might have to dig back into your history to find some people you knew before parenting that you have since lost touch with. People that you knew well at one time, but may have drifted away from. When we first became parents, my wife reconnected with a high school friend through Facebook that she hadn’t spoken to in some time. They weren’t best friends as teenagers, but they liked each other well enough. When she saw her posting things about her kids online, my wife started reaching out through simple likes and comments on posts. Eventually, the two reconnected through text and became a vital support for each other as they both were living far from home and struggling to make new friends.
I can’t tell you exactly how to make friends, but if you are a single parent, you have to find people with whom you can talk to about parenting. Not only for your own sanity, but to hear feedback from an objective third party about your parenting rules and regulations. You will never know if you are being the crazy overprotective parent if you aren’t talking with people in the same stage of life that might be able to offer you some perspective.
The bottom line is that it is possible to have too many regulations and restrictions on your kids. It is also possible to not have enough. The only way to know if you are walking the fine line between the two extremes is if you are checking in with people you trust that can affirm your gut feelings, and talk you down when you’re being unreasonable. We all have things we thought we’d never allow our kids to do that we ended up bending on. And there are many standards from which we should never stray. Talk to your partner, talk to your friends, and figure out when you’re being too strict, and when you’re not being strict enough.