Raising tiny humans is hard!
Yeah, yeah, we know. Sleepless nights, whether they’re [2]-months old or [21], and whatnot. But it’s not just the snotty noses wiped on your shirt or the mounds of laundry that multiply prior to folding. It’s not even worries at every sniffle and fever, or how you never stop putting your hand on their chest at night to make sure they’re still breathing. I kinda wish it was just the sibling bickering, repetitive calling of my name, or how they never hear you when you need them to, but catch every word if you don’t.
No, it’s harder than that. The hardest part is that you’re raising smaller versions of yourself. So you question every step you take, wanting to leave out the parts that scarred you but add in the things you wished were there. Do you know what I mean?
It’s like you want to not make the mistakes you may have felt were made in your upbringing, make the kinds of memories that you personally still hold dear, yet go above and beyond the best you ever got. We want to be a better version of our parents, even when our folks did an outstanding job. Our dreams for our children are huge, insurmountable even, yet we still work towards making their childhood great. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but can make parenting all the more difficult. We desire to raise better tiny humans, learn from our mistakes, and most importantly, not totally mess it up.
This topic really came to my mind this past week.
My daughter said, “For example, one time at Chick-fil-A you said we could trade in our toy for an ice cream. So I traded in my toy. But Izzy and Bailey didn’t want to trade theirs in. But you got them an ice cream anyway. Cause you knew they’d cry. It’s hard cause of stuff like that.”
I nodded slowly, a truckload of thoughts spinning wheels in my mind. This had been her example of how being the oldest child is hard. It had been her example of how it was often unfair. And while, as an eldest child myself, I totally understood her plight, it didn’t escape me that this example had been over three years ago!
Had it really hurt her so badly that it was etched in her memory?!
Like, how good memories from childhood were the ones that came to mind in middle age, was that how bad memories were too? Did my kid seriously have a cavern full of times I had failed her as a parent?