I think I knew what I was getting myself into when I had my kids; I worked as an educator the entirety of my professional life, and I had friends and social media and mommy blogs all dying to tell me how hard life my life was about to become. I knew I should expect to be tired. I knew I should expect to be frazzled. I knew I should expect to feel broke. I knew I should expect to experience a wide range of emotions, even within the span of a few minutes.
However, knowing what to expect out of an experience is quite different than feeling your way through it. For instance, I know that if I go outside in a downpour without an umbrella, I can expect to get wet, but that it quite different from the sensations I feel when I am cold and soaked to the bone. Similarly, I knew when my daughters were born that I would cherish them, but that was nothing compared to the intensity of the adoration I experienced when I saw them for the first time.
I’ve often said that I love being a mother and hate being a parent, and that’s true. Being a mother is perhaps the coolest thing that’s happened to me yet because it’s all about the relationships that I get to develop and enjoy with my daughters. Being a parent? It sucks. They can behave in ways I have no idea what to do with, and I am then stuck feeling stressed out and incompetent. I can teach them to spell and add and wash their hair and cook scrambled eggs, but how do I teach them to be decent, confident, delightful people capable of navigating the ups and downs of life? It seems a near impossible feat, and like all parents, I struggle to make effective decisions as I try to raise them.
Ultimately, my goal is to help them cultivate a sense of power and self-worth and to be able to successfully negotiate any and all situations they encounter, wherever and whenever they encounter them. I want them to engage with an inner dialogue that affirms their abilities and responds to their doubts with a resounding “YOU’VE GOT THIS, GIRLFRIEND!”
In my own life, believing in myself and my right to fully participate in experiences and relationships is fundamental to my happiness, and I have found that my sense of power and self-worth are contingent on my ability to manage my emotions. No good has ever come from the moments in which I’ve ceded control to feelings of anger, fear, shame, and even excitement; I’ve needed to learn strategies to regulate those emotions to feel my might. It’s an ongoing practice, and I have to be gentle with myself. Emotions are natural and instinctive. They serve an evolutionary purpose, and continue to do so, and frankly, life would be boring without them. Becoming their master rather than their slave takes a tremendous amount of mindfulness and self-control.
I can’t teach my daughters to recognize and manage their emotions if don’t model those behaviors. I have to get curious about what’s stirring them up, and then deal with it. The question is how. What can I do to accomplish such an enormous undertaking?
The first thing is avoiding those situations or people that I know will trigger me.
On the surface, that seems like a cop out. However, only when I can anticipate and accept my responses to these experiences can I develop strategies to manage them. Until then, I have neither a sense of self-control nor an ability to constructively be in the moment. For instance, it used to be that I would rage and rant when my daughter insisted on wearing the same outfit everyday. It was confusing to me, maddening since it involved doing laundry every night, and a cause of significant embarrassment. Our daily showdowns were doing more harm than good, so I decided to avoid them entirely and investigate my feelings instead. I first addressed my confusion by asking her why that one outfit was so important to her. I discovered that, for whatever reason, she needs to wear clothes that are soft and fitted, and this particular outfit was the softest and most fitted outfit that she owned. I then addressed my exasperation about the laundry situation by going out and buying no less than five of the same tank top and shorts…and in the same colors to boot! Finally, I realized that the only way to address my embarrassment was to remind myself that my daughter is my priority, and that too much consideration given to others’ opinions was a parenting fail. I had to do that repeatedly and often.
When I understood my feelings and took the requisite time to consider and implement solutions, my emotions came back into balance. The conflict just vanished. Interestingly, I discovered that resolving the clothing conundrum improved my ability to handle similar situations. I became better equipped to pick my battles. I felt empowered, my daughters’ gained an improved sense of autonomy (which, in turn, improved their own sense of power), and by seeking to understand their concerns and hang ups, I felt like a better mother. The lesson I can offer them? It’s okay to remove yourself from situations that are becoming too difficult to bear if it helps you to recenter yourself. In fact, I’ve even removed them from environments that were overstimulating in some way. Sometimes I’ve been gentle, and sometimes I’ve been forceful, but almost always, once they’ve calmed down, the girls become self-reflective and can talk about their feelings. When they open up, we can brainstorm strategies together. When they open up, they are available for learning.