Parents Talk: Parenting Strengths And Weaknesses

Welcome to Woonsocket Patch's weekly opinion column, Parents Talk.

This week, we asked our smart city parents: What is your greatest strength as a parent? What parenting skill are you just good at? What do you feel is your greatest weakness? Is there a particular parenting skill you struggle with?  

(mother of two)

As a parent, I know there are many things I should work on when it comes to my parenting skills.  One of my biggest weaknesses, if not the main one, is my lack of patience.  I want to say that I haven’t always been this way, but I can say for sure it’s been at least since I hit 40.  I had my daughter just after I turned 40.  I’m certainly not blaming my daughter, but I will say it’s not a coincidence.  It’s just that having a baby at that age is certainly different than having one at 28, when I had my son.  I would like to blame the fact that I don’t have the physical stamina I use to and of course the mental stamina as well, but I’m not sure that’s all of it either.  Aging does that to you-trivial things become blown out of proportion and a simple disagreement becomes a full argument.  Things that you glossed over 20 years ago now seem to upset your whole day. 

Maybe it’s the fact that getting older means adapting to our children growing older and relationships changing.  Our children seem to need us even more…certainly life becomes more demanding in many ways. I just know that my patience is much more short-fused than before, but you know the saying “patience is a virtue.” How true.

As for my strengths, compassion I think is at the top of the list.  I consider myself compassionate, not just as a parent, but to people in general.  As a mom, I think one needs to be compassionate and give their child/children all the love they deserve and more.  As with my lack of patience, my compassion has grown over the years.  As a parent, no one ever expects to have a special needs child, never mind two, but we deal with the hand we’re dealt.  Having two Autistic children has certainly presented its challenges, and I’m sure there are many more down the road for us.  But it’s the compassion, love, and empathy that keep my heart strong for my children each and every day.  As it’s often said, we may wish that our children were born with ”how-to manuals,” or we as parents were given an encyclopedia on raising a child, but unfortunately, they just don’t exist. I guess we have to write our own.

Michelle Higgins, (mother of three)

When I started thinking of what my strongest parenting skill was, I had some things in mind but out of curiosity I turned to my oldest son for his opinion. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that his choice was the same as mine, and that is that I am a very strong advocate, always making sure my children's needs are met and their human rights are respected. Also, alongside that skill, is that I am very involved in my children's lives be it through school, social, or extra curricular activities, I am present, accounted for and actively involved. In addition to these skills I also think I'm definitely very strong in the 'love and affection' department, I have no doubt my children will grow up knowing they were always unconditionally loved and cared for. 

As for a weakness, like most parents I have a few. If I had to choose the one I struggle with the most (and this is a hard to admit) I would say it is doing the one thing I always hated my mother doing, and that's yelling. When I get frustrated or overwhelmed you'll know it because I scream, and pretty darn loud too! Now, in my defense, I don't drink, I don't hit my kids, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs and I don't overeat (at least since I started WW 3 weeks ago.) My weakness is that I yell, and as embarrassing as it is to admit..... I will sometimes stop yelling, shut the windows in the house, and then continue with my rant. The good news is that everyone knows I'm pretty harmless so they just let me do my thing and then we all move on.
What can I say - nobody's perfect right? In closing, my son Nicholas would like to give an honorable mention to the 'control freak' that lives within me!

Michelle Couchon, (mother of  two)

My father always told me that he "worried about me every day of his life," and I can see now how that might be. If there's one thing that can keep me up at night, it's worry for my children, and worry regarding my own parenting skills. Having said that, I'm well aware of my shortcomings, though perhaps not so aware of my strengths. One strength I am aware of, however, is the fact that I always keep my word. I learned at a young age how hurtful it can be not to be able to trust your parents to keep their word. When I first became a mother, I committed to never giving my children my word unless I was sure I could carry it out. Fourteen years later and two children later, I can say that I've managed to do this.  My children trust me. They know that if "mom says she'll do something, she'll do it." 

As for my greatest weakness, that one's easy: food! I've always been a pushover when it comes to forcing my children to eat right. If they don't like something - including and especially vegetables-I could never bring myself to "make them eat it." I've tried all sorts of ways, from denying them food for the rest of the night, to making them sit at the kitchen table alone, and in the end I've always caved in. I simply could not - and still can't-bring myself to let them go to bed hungry. Because of this, I am paying the high price of cooking two to three different meals on any given night!