Being a parent is really hard. Like, really hard. You get through the nine months of crazy symptoms that would ordinarily send you to the ER, grit your teeth through the labor pains, then they hand you this tiny little human to keep alive. It’s not like the egg experiment in high school. You don’t get to just not break it for a few weeks. You gotta not break it forever. Or roughly [18] years. No worries, though. The labor and delivery nurse pats you on the back, hollahs “good luck sucker,” then sends you on your way with only rudimentary knowledge of how that seat for the car thingy works.
Ok, so you make it through the first couple of weeks without accident. After you tackled the fear of bumping their little head (with the fleshy piece protecting their brain) up against door frames, you feel pretty confident. I mean, you still sleep with one eye open and stare at them in the middle of the night to make sure their chest is rising and falling, but overall you feel pretty legit. Heck, by the time they’re two you have a handle on the parenting thing. Sorta. I mean, kinda. You even start thinking about having another one.
I think you get my point. Parenting ain’t easy. No matter which way you slice it. You can feel pretty confident with it one day, and then the next they’ll successfully knock you down a peg. Children are humbling. You think you have one phase of childhood or the parenting paradox navigated, but then you enter another challenging stage.
I have three daughters, and while newborn-coupled-with-toddler-while-teaching-homeschool rocked my world, the thing I hear most from people to watch out for are the teenage years.
“Just you wait until they’re all going through puberty at once,” a well-meaning acquaintance will say.
And while I’m not even ready to think about such a thing, I’m also not convinced that will be the toughest thing I face. I believe the hardest part of parenting I come against is already here. And that is trying to raise a child in the selfish society we have become. Attempting to instill morals in a morally corrupt world is no easy task. Convincing my girls to be selfless in today’s selfish world is a challenge. In a society that’s all about “me,” and one that places far too much importance on outward appearance, what others think, and making a name for yourself, it’s like the deck is stacked against you. It’s an unfair fight.
Today’s parenting examples show picture-perfect photos of little girls in designer duds or snapshots of tweens who look like they’re [20]. We have no problem toting our kiddos’ goodies for the world to see. Smile for the camera.
Today’s parenting examples celebrate learning to read before three or enrolling in an elite daycare while they’re still in the womb. It’s a society that pushes for number one, plays sports seven days a week, and gives such motivational wisdom as only the strongest survive. Or weakness is for losers.
We’re a world of winners. Everyone wants to be an American Idol, Instafamous, trend on Twitter, or get a million YouTube hits. It’s all about the likes, the followers, and how many “friends” you can amass.