Our Kids Will Complain About Us in Therapy Someday
A friend recently shared her struggle when her toddler was going through some behavior issues.
“I just freaked out — like I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing!”
Parenting, like anything else, is learned by doing. And because no two humans are exactly alike, we learn lessons we’ll never use again. Once this particular kid is out of this particular phase, whatever we figured out over sleepless nights has a 2% chance of working for the next kid.
None of us know what we’re doing. It’s impossible to know what is the right thing to do. Different people need different things at different times — and that goes for our children, too. But we try our best, and sometimes we lose sleep over it.
We wonder if maybe we should just relax and not worry about fucking up our kids, and maybe that alone would keep us from messing up.
“But then if I’m not trying to do any particular thing I’ll just follow the unconscious patterns handed to me in my own childhood!”
The fact that you’re concerned about how to parent means you’re already better than the average parent. That’s what people say, anyway.
