Ever have one of those “ouch” moments as a parent?
You know what I’m talking about, one of those moments as a parent where you have made a mistake and you think to yourself, “Ouch that really hurts.”
It hurts because most parents like to believe they know what they are doing. We are supposed to have it all together, aren’t we? Yet the reality is that we don’t always know what we are doing and sometimes we really don’t have it all together. This week I experienced an “ouch” moment.
With my middle school son joining football this year, I had lots of visions in my mind. I am a definite football fan and I always cherish being able to support my children in their interests. As soon as he joined the football team I could imagine myself going to every game, wearing a t-shirt depicting the team’s logo and wildly cheering them on.
My husband and I ran out and got him a nice pair of cleats; we ordered a jersey with his name on it and have no problem bragging to everyone how our son plays football. While that sounds all well and good, there was also underneath all that support a great deal of pressure being put on our son.
The details of the story are not important. Let’s just say that in our enthusiasm we had begun to put lots of pressure on him. He hurt his shoulder a couple of weeks ago and we have been eager for it to heal up. He was unable to play in his first game and he definitely felt our disappointment.
I found myself getting impatient with how long the healing was taking and was almost trying to make him feel guilty by mentioning how much money we have spent on football.
Long story short, this past week my son ended up having a frank discussion with me. He opened my eyes up to some things I had been doing that were making him feel bad. Needless to say I felt like a schmuck. While I want to always support my children, I don’t ever want them to feel that if they don’t meet my expectations I will be disappointed in them.
It wasn’t my intention to do that but it was exactly what I was doing. It helped me to see that there may be other ways I am unintentionally doing this. So as the new school year starts, I hope to learn from this “ouch” moment. Supporting our children is wonderful but we have to be careful that our support doesn’t turn into pressure or unfair expectations.
What “ouch” moments have you learned from?
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