Parenting With Courage

“Making the decision to have a child is momentous.  It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”  ~Elizabeth Stone

Becoming a parent is a transformative experience.  Embryonic cells multiply and unfurl within you to craft a whole new person that never before existed. Then with the flourish of a hospital drape and a clip of an umbilical cord, you step into the bewildering new realm of parenthood. 

At first, this world may be one of picturesque beauty and serene maternal instinct.  Before long, however, this Eden is interrupted when fear creeps into Paradise and rears its ugly head.

It often starts the second night in the hospital.  Nature is kind—after birth, baby often sleeps soundly through the first evening.  But after an entire day of being surrounded by adoring family and friends poking and prodding it to say hello and being passed around like the latest American Girl doll at a seven-year-old’s birthday party, baby is transformed into a sleepless, wailing, un-doll-like creature of the night.

Then fear whispers to you:  What is wrong with him or her?  Are they wet?  Are they hungry?  But my milk has not come in—what do I do?  Should I hold them?  Should I ignore them?  Should I give them a bottle?  But then that will interfere with breastfeeding and if I do not breastfeed, my baby will be deprived and grow up to be stupid…

Welcome to the wonderful world of parenting, where nothing is for sure.  We worry about everything—past, present and future.  At least I do—and I consider myself a pretty laidback personality.  Heaven help my more neurotic friends.

Personally, I often find myself fretting about  my children’s futures.  This looks very different for each of my kids.  For my daughter, I am troubled when I hear her answer the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” with the reply, “A rock star!” while dancing around the house in her bikini.

My son, on the other hand, has been known to answer the question with, “A hamster.”  When we clarified with, “No, what kind of job do you want to do when you grown up?” he responded: “A hamster job.”  Little does he know how often grown ups feel as if they are at work running on a hamster wheel.  I guess I should be happy for him that chances are good that he will find his dream job pretty easily.

Not only do I worry about my kids’ futures, I worry about whatever current stage they happen to be in.  When my daughter was younger, I was afraid she had a speech impediment because she said, “lel-low” instead of “yellow”.  Now that I know she does not have a speech problem, I worry about her sassiness and becoming a “Mean Girl”.

There was also the time that I wondered aloud to my husband if someone could become colorblind because my son, who had previously known all his colors, suddenly seemed to mix them all up for several months.  My current fear is that his habits of hitting himself in the head for fun and picking his nose will become permanent ones.

Then, of course, I constantly wonder about the past and if my previous mistakes have forever ruined the present and the future.  Did I make the right choices? Did I spend enough time with my kids?  Did I give them enough freedom to teach them independence?  Did I set firm enough boundaries to teach them how to make good choices?  Did I let them watch too much TV? Did I feed them healthy enough food? Was it a mistake to [fill in the blank]? The list goes on…

I conclude that is impossible to parent without fear.  As long as we are human and we love our children the way parents should, it will follow us wherever we go.  However, I do believe it is possible to parent with courage—to declaw the monster and render it powerless.  Nelson Mandela said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

Therefore, instead of beating myself up for occasionally feeling anxious, or even worse, being  afraid that I have too much fear, I acknowledge my fears instead of hiding them, even poking fun at them when I get the chance, then set them aside.  I try my best to parent with the end in mind.  I ask, “What will this parenting choice naturally lead to?” not, “What might happen if I make this parenting choice?”  For me, this is how I choose to be a courageous parent.