I find alumni email newsletters from my alma mater to be depressing. I found one in my inbox over the weekend, filled with news about the school being overenrolled this fall. They’ve converted storage closets to dorm rooms and put in bunk beds where there should be singles. This I find amusing. But on the whole, in a nostalgic way, the email depresses me.
I don’t want to be a student again. I just miss the feeling of accomplishment. I knew what the objectives were, I knew how much effort would be required, and I knew when I could expect to be rewarded for my hard work. Rarely is any of that true in this parenting gig. I don’t know how much energy tomorrow will require. I don’t even know what ultimate goal I’m working toward, exactly.
A friend once asked me what kind of adults I wanted my kids to turn out to be. “If you don’t have a target, you’ll miss it every time,” she said cheerfully. Um, yeah, target. “Of course you want them to grow up to be godly adults,” she began, matter-of-factly—why yes, now that you mention it, I do!—“But what else?” It’s not enough to plan that they all become adults? People with families, and, uh, probably jobs? Not criminals, preferably. Not into substance abuse. Good mental health would be a plus. Emotional stability would be nice. And that’s about all I’ve got.
I have a hard time formulating a long-term vision for them, possibly because I’m immersed in their physical and mental development, which I think of in terms of ‘what’s next.’ Audrey just started crawling; next she’ll be pulling herself up to standing. Owen’s talking in full sentences; soon he’ll be wondering ‘why.’ Abigail can find countries on the map; next we might want to explain about capitol cities. But I don’t have a picture of where they’ll be twenty years from now, when all the milestones have been reached and there is no ‘what’s next’ for me to facilitate.
Without goals to work toward, though, I feel like I spend my days putting out fires and never getting anywhere. When I encounter my three-year-old in the kitchen with an open gallon of orange juice and barely get out the words, “Please put down—” before he vigorously shakes the jug, spraying pulp and citrus onto the floor, onto the counters, on his shirt and in my hair (just as my six-year-old comes in from the yard with a skinned knee and the baby awakens and begins to cry, naturally), I am in fix-it mode.
When the baby won’t settle down to nap and the older begin bickering noisily, I am operating in the moment. I might realize that there could be a life lesson in there somewhere, but rarely do I handle the situation on that level.
And when those ill-handled moments pile up, one after another, I begin to suspect I’m not making a very good show of this mothering business. At the end of those days, I can tally up my efforts: I was the mom who mopped the orange juice; who said no to finger painting on the walls; who sent the kids outside to play, then made them come back inside when they crashed their bikes into each other on purpose; who washed eight loads of laundry, then spent an hour trying to keep the kids from climbing onto the mountain of clean clothes, not to mention trying to get them to put away their own pajamas; who ended a dozen squabbles, but who cannot convince the three-year-old that WE DO NOT HIT; who helped the children put back the three shelves’ worth of books they knocked to the floor; who despaired when the baby wouldn’t sleep at her regular naptime, or when the three-year-old fussed all morning, or when the six-year-old proclaimed all activities boring (and certainly when all three happened at once). Then I lie awake in bed at night wondering why we didn’t seem to DO anything all day, thinking I should have handled the bike incident better, counting up the wasted moments. But hey! Everyone’s still alive! my husband helpfully points out.
So how do I develop long-term goals for what kind of people I want my kids to be, while still leaving room for their uniquely created personalities? How do I handle the everyday crises with a long-term perspective? How can I walk away from the orange-juice-stained kid feeling like we’ve shared a constructive moment, rather than just solved the current dilemma? I want to feel like I’m making progress, and I want to be able to picture my goal. But right now I feel like I’m just surviving.
This post is one in a series on mommy guilt at Parentopia. Stay tuned to see how Devra and Aviva help me apply Mommy-Guilt-Free Principle Number 3: Look toward the future and at the big picture. Don’t become overly hung up on the here and now. While you’re waiting, check out their advice to Her Bad Mother on Principle Number 2: Parenting is not a competitive sport, and their advice to A Mommy Story on Principle Number 1: You must be willing to let some things go.
