“Before I became a parent I honestly thought I was a nice person.”
“Once you become a parent, you understand how wars start.”
I can’t remember where I heard the above quotes, but I have to laugh. Being a parent really can throw you for a loop.
I had a fair bit of experience with kids under my belt by the time I became a parent. I had taken a lot of classes in communication, and read lots of parenting books. When my kids were young I even took some parenting classes offered by the local community college and the local hospital.
I don’t know why it was such a surprise to me that things don’t always work out just like in the books.
For some reason, ideas that seem perfectly straightforward when you are talking with other parents aren’t that simple in practice. Sometimes planned responses seem to fly out of my head when I’m dealing with my kids. Sometimes they manage to distract me, other times the situation or the kid is just slightly different than what you expected.
“I was a really good nanny,” I would think. “Why in the world am I getting so angry with my own kid?”
Part of it, of course, is how much you are invested in your children—you want the best for them, and your own competence as a parent is involved too. Also, child care jobs are temporary. Knowing you will influence your child directly for about twenty years and indirectly ever after, the stakes are a lot higher. It doesn’t help that we are constantly bombarded about “consistency”. Consistent responses do help a child learn. When a parent is inconsistent about addressing behavior, it may take much longer to deal with that behavior when you become consistent later. This leads us to worry that every decision we set—about sleep training, co-sleeping, snacking, TV, homework, dating—will be irrevocable. (It isn’t, by the way. Change is hard but not impossible.)
Adoptive parents, although we deal with some different issues, are for the most part just like other parents. Our families are great but taxing, incredible but incredibly annoying. Learn from other parents, and most of all—laugh.
Please see these related blogs:
The Parents Blog here at Families.com
Also see the Parenting Forum at Families.com to read what parents have to say—and to share your comments.