What with Biden in and Trump out, and various vaccines making their way into the veins of many millions, it feels like maybe, just maybe, it’s time to start looking forward a bit further ahead in life.
It feels like when you’re out in nature, on a long walk, and you crest a hill, or emerge from the woods. Suddenly everything opens out, your world expands and you can see the horizon. I always stop and look around in those moments. Let’s hope it really is like that, not one of those deceptive moments, when you think you’ve got to the top of the hill, only to realise there’s still a few hundred meters to climb.
As we, fingers crossed, start to emerge from maelstrom, now is a good time to look further ahead.
Where are we going with this parenting thing?
For me at least, becoming a parent was something I wanted to do, but I couldn’t quite say why. My reasons were a vague mix of the fun of kids, wanting to start my own family and it being the next natural step as a grown up.
I think, from my conversations and research, that I’m pretty normal in that regard, but while I sort of found myself being a father, I definitely found myself in being a father. This isn’t about me though, it’s about the kids. And of course what it means to be a better dad.
There isn’t a destination in parenting, it’s a lifelong journey. We’ll still be parents until the end, but by then our work will be done and, hopefully, we’ll be benefiting from it and being cared for by our kids. Parenting then is about raising our brilliant, beautiful little people to be the best big people they can be. The best versions of themselves. That’s the ‘job’, to use an inadequate label for something so challenging.
Why is it so hard?
Parenting is a funny mix of contradictions and seemingly unsquarable circles.
We need to set clear boundaries that are constantly adjusted for the people we are today, the world around us and the age and stage of our children’s development. Three things that are constantly changing, and so must our boundaries, but at the same time they need to be clear and strong.
We need to give unconditional love, with endless patience, yet have far less time and space to replenish those essential resources.
We have to provide more, while having less time to earn the means to do it.
We have to be better role models and set better examples, while having less energy and headspace to make it happen.
We feel stuck in ruts and look forward to the next stage, but when we get there, it’s just a new bunch of challenges and we look back longingly at the last one - new-born snuggles, crazy toddler cuddles and hilarious conversations.
And somehow we just keep doing it. Like parents have done for millennia.
We stretch and mostly don’t break. We make it work. Somehow, we find the care, enough of the energy, that little bit more love, sometimes the patience and magically the time. We find it in ourselves, in places we didn’t know existed. Like when you think you’ve got to the top of the hill but you haven’t. You dig deep, keep going, enjoying the exertion, the scenery and the feeling of moving forward.
If parenting is about raising our brilliant, beautiful little people to be the best big people they can be, the best versions of themselves, maybe being a parent teaches you how to be a better version of yourself and makes you realise, you had more inside you than you ever thought.