Blog Post: Better Now Than Never

You don’t realize until you have children just how much you are going to be just like your own parents. No one in the world should be surprised by this, as they are who formed us in our most moldable years, and from whom we have learned to deal with life. However, the first time that phrase your mom or dad always said to you while you were growing up slips between your lips, it slaps you in the face and you know there is no going back. 

Thank God, I had good parents. They worked hard for our family and raised two great kids--if I may say so myself. Not everyone gets that chance, and I am very grateful. Since I survived childhood relatively intact and was equipped with the skills to navigate independent living, I felt my parents’ example was enough for me as I have parented my own two children these eight and a half years. 

But every situation is different, and as a single mom, not all their tactics work for me. As I’ve run into walls and fallen into potholes common to the single parent experience, I have felt very frustrated that I couldn’t do things like I thought I should be able to, like my parents did. I thought parenting books were lame and that any person with common sense could work it out. Sure, maybe if your family was really dysfunctional then a book would help balance out all the bad experiences. But for me, I had enough good from which to draw.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Maybe too, reading a book about how to parent differently or better felt to me like an admittance of failure or inadequacy. Wrong again. I have no problem reading a book about a foreign country when I want to learn about it. I look up recipes when I want to cook something a new or different way. I never step back and say to myself, why aren’t you smart enough to know that? You’ve eaten enough food in your life to figure it out. So, when it comes to something as dear to me as my children, where did I get the idea that I would have all the answers and that looking for ideas and techniques was somehow saying I was a bad mom?

So I avoided the books. People gave them to me. People recommended them. But I thanked them politely and stood my ground. That is, until I was just too tired to keep doing the same thing and getting the same results. So I went to the library and requested the books. 

The first thing I learned was that nothing will make you feel more stupid and inadequate than a parenting book--that and other moms that you overhear talking about the bad parenting of another mom they might know.

After that initial blow to my pride, I found the books I chose very practical and full of ideas that I could at least try. Some of the things I read just didn’t feel applicable. Some things I read, I knew and I just wasn’t implementing or  I had been avoiding because I thought it might be too much of a fight. 

I read books for parents and for single parents. I wrote down what main points stood out to me. And I started trying to change. 

There’s the trick, my friends. I started to change. Who’s the grown-up? Who’s the teacher? Who’s the example? How do they learn or know any better but from me? Ouch. This whole time, here I am frustrated at them, but how have I shown them to respond to difficult situations? How have they seen me deal with anger? How have they seen me handle rules, disappointment or mistreatment? I don’t care who you are or how awesome you think you are, your kids are the most convicting mirror into which you can gaze. In them, you see exactly the kind of person you are. All the good. All the faults. All the potential. 

So I am determined. I’ve been doing what I thought best to do for them for their whole lives. I don’t think it’s too late to change, though. It’s never too late to try harder. In that example, they learn to never settle and to never be too proud to ask for help. What better lesson can I offer?