Why is Parenting So Hard?

A reflection by Brian Kim

Earlier this week I attended a lecture organized by the San Francisco Council of Parent Participation Nursery Schools—a long name for a collaboration of some of the Co-operative preschools here in the city. The speaker was Dr. Laura Markham, author of “Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids. How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting” and founder of ahaparenting.com.

Dr. Markham had some brilliant things to say and some things that I wasn’t necessarily in agreement with, but she said a few things that were poignant and resonated with me in a deep way.

Why is parenting so hard? She began the lecture with this questions and fielded a few answers:

“We are alone in this and have no support.” Dr. Markahm’s response was eerily like hearing Pastor Dave: “It looks like this is not the way humans were designed—take a look at tribal cultures, that surround children with adults to help.” We were indeed made for community, a good thing for our children to realize at a young age and to get accustomed to having a variety of adult influences.

“Our culture does not value children and those that raise them.” Wow. Ring true to any of you? How many restaurants in SF are off-limits to our families?

One of the best things Dr. Markham highlighted is parenting is difficult because we have to be the grown-ups! We are all great parents when we’re not triggered—there are emotional responses that happen sometimes, and our kids trigger those.

What do we do? Stop, Drop & Breathe. You, as the parent, always have the power to calm the storm—or blow it up into a tornado.

How do we calm the storm once an emotional outburst has already happened or is about to happen?

Calm yourself. Admit my contribution. Connect with my child. Empathize—understand her perspective. Set a limit (ok to be angry, not ok to hit your brother). Help her work through her emotions, just by accepting it and listening. The result? Cooperation & a deeper relationship.

Dr. Markham noted that we are trying to raise emotionally intelligent (or healthy) children. Sound familiar? Emo church for kids? Our kids are filling their ‘emotional backpacks’ from brith and need to learn how to unpack and find that cathartic release, sometimes in the form of crying or whining…just as God validates our emotions, let’s give our children freedom to feel and tools to work through them to bring healing and reconciliation.