Not Letting Our Childhood Burdens Become Our Kids’ Burdens

Photo of a white woman taking a selfie of herself in a mirror that says "There is no foot too small that it cannot leave an imprint" Text: "Not Letting Our Childhood Burdens Become Our Kids' Burdens"

“Why do all of these people already have friends?” I thought to myself looking around the elementary school cafeteria during parents night for kindergarten. Clumps of parents sat at long tables, chatting away. Even my anti-social husband had wandered off to talk to someone he knew from preschool. I stifled the urge to get out my phone and stare urgently at the screen. Instead, I read the multi-colored handouts with an intense stare. Being there brought back so many experiences that color my perspective on my kids today.

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Collaborating with Our Children’s Wildness

Collaborating with My Child's Wildness" Photo of a sunset over the ocean

He runs up to me, his hand loosely grasping mine. I go to squeeze it and he’s gone again, dashing away from the oncoming waves licking at his red and blue sandals.

I stand firm, the water pulling on my feet, flowing back out to the ocean. He darts around me, unpredictable, coming and going, coming and going. The waves can’t be predicted either – sometimes they stop feet from me, sometimes they wash over my knees, pulling me out to the endless water.

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Seeing the Impacts When You Least Expect It

Seeing the Impacts When You Least Expect It; Photo: Boy in a snow jacket and hat shoveling snow on a sidewalk

“I want to help!” my older son declared, in that way he does when he feels like life has dealt him a terribly unfair hand.

“Oh! Sure,” I said, handing him the snow shovel. We were clearing the sidewalk of snow, in one of the few times a year Washington D.C. gets it.

Both his tone of voice and demand to help surprised me. He’s a kid for whom chores are like pulling teeth. So volunteering for a hard job that meant I did less work? Excellent. I did want to give him a heads-up though. “The snow is pretty tough to shovel, as there’s a layer of ice underneath. From when we had the freezing rain last night. So try to get under the ice, if you can.”

As he managed the big shovel awkwardly, I tried to both hold my tongue and figure out what inspired this burst of enthusiasm.

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Juggling the Standards and Ambitions of Modern Parenting

Juggling the Standards and Ambitions of Modern Parenting (Photo of a kid pulling a rope with another kid holding on to it)

“The house should be so much cleaner!” I think, panicked about my parents arriving any minute. That streak of panic occurs despite the fact that they know perfectly well that they’ve been the only people in our house since last March and that we’re not exactly the tidiest people by a long shot. Expectations are already low.

And yet I think this anyway. The self-judgment weighs hard, even when I push back against it. The hardest part is that I think this way about everything: cleaning, cooking, parenting, activism, writing, even taking care of myself. Perhaps worst of all, I suspect I’m not the only one.

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How Understanding My Brain’s Differences Helped Me Be a Better Parent

How Understanding My Different Wiring Helped Me Be a Better Parent (Photo: Two white boys swinging on swings)

“We can listen to music or I can yell at you to stop. Which would you rather?” I said to my kids, exasperated. They were making a shit-ton of noise and I felt like my head was going to explode. Everything was just so damn loud. The music went on – we settled on Rusted Root – and everything settled down. Or at least settled down as much as my incredibly high-energy children will let it.

But this incident was a culmination of a lot of self-exploration.

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Learning to Let Others Take Care of Us

Text: Learning to Let Others Take Care of Us; Photo: Young child with a bear hat on his head and white woman with a computer on her lap sitting outside on a box

 

“Just let me take care of you!” I yelled at my four year old as I chased him around our beanbag chairs. I was trying to get him to let me put a cold-pack on his forehead, which was rapidly developing quite the goose egg.

Those words echoed in my head as I argued with my own mom a few days later. A pipe in our basement was clogged. Every time we drained our kitchen sink, water filled with food particles spewed up from a pipe behind the washing machine. Lovely. My mom was worried that if we ran the washing machine, it too would make the flooding worse.

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Learning about Parenting from My Bunny-Obsessed Children

Picture: Lop-eared bunny next to a rope ball; Learning About Parenting from my Bunny-Obsessed Children
“Just give him space,” I plead. “Seriously, just back off.”
Despite my increasingly desperate tone of voice, the kids crowd around our new bunny. No matter how much I urge them to give him an escape route or to not stick food in his face – “Would you like me to stick broccoli in your face?” I ask – they just can’t seem to help it. They just love him too much to leave him alone.
But isn’t that feeling familiar to us parents?

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