How To Build A House When You Don’t Have The Tools

Imagine that you are given the task of building a house. Not just any house, one that is magnificent with all the bells and whistles. It has to be large in size and luxurious in details.

Hardwood flooring and skylights and solar panels, a pizza oven and anything else you can throw in there to make it worthy of a design magazine. Not only does the inside have to be awe inspiring but the landscape must be perfection with nary a weed in sight.

Oh, and there will be critics standing around judging you every step of the way. They will be more than happy to point out your mistakes and any flaws they see.

Now imagine that you receive no plans or instructions on how to build this home. The only tools you are given is a crossbow, a bag of rocks, and an orange. And you have eighteen years to complete this house so take your time but plan accordingly.

Okay, get to it!

What?

How can you possibly build a house if you don’t have the proper tools? How do you construct a gorgeous home with nothing more than a few very unhelpful and unrelated items?

That’s exactly how I feel about raising kids. You’re given an enormous task and have no choice but to give it your best shot with the tools you have in your arsenal.

And there’s no guarantee that you have what your child needs. Your natural skill set may not be required, and you have no choice but to work with what you have. You can’t magically be something you’re not.

It’s like running a marathon with no breaks but lots of dehydration, blisters, and bloody feet. Your head will pound, your heart will race, you will want to lie down and cry but you can’t, you have to keep going. And this marathon is a 24/7 thing so don’t think you’re going to get a lot of rest.

I have a lot of parenting metaphors. I’ll save the gardening one for another time.

Here’s my own short story: I was thrilled to have a daughter after having a son. He was always on the go and full of energy, typical of boys.

I imagined she’d be quiet.

I thought she’d be docile and introverted.

While I had no trouble relating to my son and dealing with the care and raising of his particular needs, my daughter was a whole other situation.

Raising her has been challenge after challenge, forcing me to reach into my bag of tricks and come up nearly empty-handed each time. I’m digging and digging but don’t seem to have in my bag, anything that is particularly suitable.

What I have is a decent dose of empathy, an ability to clean cuts and apply band aids, I have some good nurturing skills, a smattering of patience, an inability to handle conflict, an anxiety disorder, and a deep hatred of raised voices and fighting of any kind. I know my way around the kitchen to produce while not gourmet meals, but things you can eat without getting sick.

That’s all I’ve got.

You can read book after book on how to raise a child but applying that knowledge in the heat of the moment is a whole other story.

It’s not like you can press pause during what’s called a “consequence” where your child gets a punishment for swerving outside the boundaries of accepted behavior, run to a book and look up exactly what to do when your kid does something wrong.

Thank goodness there’s google but I have yet to discover detailed instructions on how to deal with a very chatty, bossy, Type A child when you are a very quiet, calm (ish) Type F parent.

I don’t think Type F is a real type. But if it was it, would encompass all things introverted and gentle and sensitive yet also include an ability to swallow a brewing temper tantrum because sometimes I don’t know what the heck I’m doing and that tightening in my chest makes me feel like I might combust any second.

You might get lucky and have a child / children suited to the emotional gifts you have been given, awesome for you! Yay! Your path to producing a well-adjusted human who will not be in therapy is clearly paved with gold.

But for some of us, it’s a bit of a struggle and it’s an everyday thing where we (me) are just trying to get through the day without collapsing like a marathon runner who has to be carried over the finish line. See how I bring it back to marathon running?

And now I’ll come full circle with my house analogy…

…maybe we don’t end up victorious with that mansion but we build something strong and hopefully, with a decent foundation and maybe inside you don’t find platinum toilet seats and Italian marble but you find things equally great and unexpected and you can stand back a little and be proud just the same.

Proud of yourself that is, because you didn’t give up when all you had was a bag of rocks, you kept going. And you made it.