So I thought something new.
As one... matures, these moments are less frequent and all the more noteworthy. When the new thing brings Life and Peace and Rest, I like to say that it's God speaking, but I'm never exactly sure if that's true. If my new thought turns out to be life-stealing for someone else, I'd hate to make God its author, you know?
Regardless of the genesis for this particular thought, it has indeed brought Life and Peace and Rest for my own heart and so I'm writing it down, the best way I know to remember it.
Parenting was extra-hard this last weekend. My boy was being jerky in front of friends and my beloved and I had run out of ways to respond. When we run out like this, we resort to our baseline terrible: for me it's a quiet quitting with hint of "you're not worth it" and for him it's a loud anger with strong undertones of "someone needs to put you in your place". Both are kind of gross, and most often leave us angry with the kid and with each other. The awful of these moments is magnified by an audience, and in this case, an audience of friends who love us and love our kids and also are comfortable enough to agree that the kid's a jerk and that we should probably do something to fix it. The impulse to agree with us is appreciated, but to be honest, in that moment I probably need more to hear that our kid is unusually great and that we're doing exactly what we need to in the moment.
Sigh.
The next 48 hours were full of interwebbing and wallowing in self-questioning-despair and of course a Moxieverse check-in. I could not stop wondering if I should really be meaner, stronger, stricter; if I had somehow enabled this 67 month old child to become a raging egomaniac incapable of self-regulation or decent manners. Over and over this: maybe we wrecked him.
And then yesterday, an epiphany (and I'll quote from my Moxie post): Parenting is all about me (obviously). I'm not parenting for who I want my kids to be when they're older. I'm parenting for who I want to be when I'm older. I don't want to look back and think, I wish I'd loved more/laughed more/caved more/been ridiculous more. If my kids are a bit messed up because I was inconsistent and sometimes too lax and sometimes freaked the fuck out, so be it. But if I can look back and say I'm glad I got to do that, win. Win. Holy shit. That feels SO much better.
Since this moment, there has been Life and Peace and Rest in my heart, and in my home. I am experiencing them in my own heart, and witnessing it in my children's rhythms. We are quieter today, and kinder and bouncing back from the quotidian set-backs that make up a day. It will all go to shit eventually, but there is fruit in these first hours and I'm deeply grateful.
As parents I think we think often about who we're raising and who we want them to be when they grow-up. We imagine them as teenagers and university students and newly-weds and maybe even as parents themselves. But I don't know that we very often think about who we will be when we grow up - aren't we supposed to be grown-up already? And yet there is much life still to be lived (God-willing) and as ever, the choices we make in the present are shaping our future. Future me wants to be invited to participate in my kids' life events, big and small. Future me wants to celebrate victories and mourn losses with these people. Future me wants to look over to Future Scott and still like the guy, and be able to see bits and pieces of his character and skill and love lurking in the hearts of my then-grown children. Future me wants to be able to look at a life that has moved towards more love, more kindness, more generosity, more grace, a life that choose Goodness as often as it can.
Living this way, focused on my outcomes instead of (or maybe, in addition to) theirs, frees me up SO much. Their behaviour is no longer a measuring stick of MY success or failure as a parent - MY behaviour is the only one worth measuring. Certainly I am the only one I can change in the short-term.
Perhaps this is too selfish, too self-centered. Probably it is. And yet. The upshot is that the change in focus lets me see others a bit more kindly. More love, less judgment. Those children and those grown-ups doing all kind of awful living? they're just not done growing up yet.
Parent-focused parenting. Maybe I'll start doing workshops. :)
