Mama mumblings

Editor's Note: I came across this tonight. I don't know when I wrote it, I don't remember writing it, and I don't know where I was going with it. But it was interesting to me, so I'm publishing it untouched. :)

I was chatting with a friend today about parenting. She has a 6-month-old, and I have 3 kiddos who were once 6 months old (not all at the same time). We talked about how we were raised by strict parents. She couldn't say "butt", and I couldn't wear pants. Oh how times have changed. We brushed on the topic of swearing in music and found we weren't in agreement. It wasn't a big deal, because our friendship is awesome that way.

I thought about how many different parenting styles there are. I don't think I'm in complete agreement with any of my friends on all the ways we parent. I have some things in common, of course, but not everything. Because we have different personalities and giftings, and because we have kids with different personalities and giftings. No two families are or can be the same. What a disservice we do when we try to mimic the way another family lives life.

Anyway, I was thinking about levels of strictness and how we choose rules for our kids. Really, most of our rules have come from experiencing things we didn't want to see continue. For instance, when our kids were little and blew bubbles in their milk, they got their straws taken away. Now we have to say things like, "no screen time before bed" and "no media devices in your bedroom behind closed doors." We create rules to protect our kids from themselves in ways they don't otherwise care about.

Parents have the choice to micromanage (which is necessary with a toddler but destructive with a teenager), be entirely hands off (which my social-worker friend can tell you often leads to a termination of parental rights), or fall somewhere in between-- which most of us do.

But no matter how lenient or open we want to be with our kids, we will eventually have to make some kind of rules to keep our kids from hurting themselves-- physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. Because we have a propensity to wander. A propensity toward self-destruction. 

I got to thinking about that. I remembered being a new mom and having all sorts of ideas about how I would raise my babies. Of course, everyone without a toddler (or teenager) knows how to parent them. I knew I would parent very differently than my parents did. We'd have open conversations, my kids would know that I'm for them, they'd share everything in their world with their awesome parents, and it would be beautiful. They'd experience grace and truth hand-in-hand. They'd love each other. They'd be respectful and mature. We'd build forts and be creative and go on hikes and support each other and do everything together with such closeness and camaraderie.

And there have been moments of that. Snippets. My hope is that as I pray them through their second half of childhood and continue to try shaping them with the time I have left, we will one day have most of those things. But as I sit on my couch typing right now, my husband and son are playing a video game in one room, and my girls are watching a show about an unsolved murder in another. AND there's a dog by my feet. Who dreamed this up? Not me.

I am not the parent I thought I would be. I'm not even the person I imagined I'd be. 

Parenting is not what I expected. And I love it. I have never experienced a fullness, a sense of purpose, or fear like this.

I have learned that I cannot parent much differently than I was.

Actually, while I'm thinking about it, I think "pray and adapt" would really be the best parenting advice I could give anyone. Huh, interesting epiphany. Thanks!