The Hardest Job in the World

First a TTC update. We are still waiting to start our first cycle. DtD needs to finish his STD testing and we need to sign our paperwork, and then we're ready to go.

It's strange thinking about having another kid. I know that I do want another kid. I also know that I'm okay having one. I know that I want another boy and I know that having a girl would be okay. I just desperately want Finn to be able to have another male in the house. I know I want TTC to take some time because I'm not ready, but if it happens quickly, it'll be okay. I know it won't happen quickly. Then I wonder if I'm trying to convince myself that it will take time because I really want it to happen now. I am telling myself that I will not go crazy this time. I know that I might go crazy anyway.

The Hardest Job in the World

It's amazing how parenting has rocked me to my core. I've always hated when people smugly state that parenting is the hardest job in the world, except that it really is. Well, maybe there are some harder jobs, like working on an oil rig. Maybe there is something else out there that requires the same level of physical stamina, but I honestly don't know if there's anything that will suck as much out of you emotionally.

My goal as a parent is that my kid is almost always okay. The saddest part of this is that I, his parent, am the biggest threat to his emotional safety in this world. I have the power to hurt him down to his very core, to make his world an unsafe place, to destroy his confidence in what is right and good. And I can do this with one mean word, one frustrated moment. I have already done it on too many occassions.

Before I became a parent I thought I was an okay person. I had flaws. They were manageable. I had a mostly healthy relationship that easily rebounded when it veered into unhealthy. Now I realize that none of that is true.

My flaws are huge gaping wounds in my psyche the lead to poor coping skills, and my poor coping skills hurt my child. My unhealthy patterns cannot rebound when applied to a two and a half year old boy who needs me to be his safe place and not someone who hurts him. I have come to realize that these flaws are historical, that they were instilled in me by my parents and by their parents before them. I've come to realize that the childhood that I felt was good, that the parents I thought treated me mostly kindly, maybe didn't, and that I have a lot of work to not pass on these flaws to my own child.

I've found that many, maybe most, parents around me tend to throw up their hands and portray the world around them as always criticizing parents when they are challenged to go above and beyond. I've found that they want solutions, easy to implement systems that involve steps and numbers apply to their children so they can get good results. I've found that few want to turn the microscope back on themselves, their behavior, and consider that they actually might need to change who they are in order to be a good parents.

And this is why parenting is a really hard job. Because it requires constant self examination, it requires you to constantly look at your flaws, it requires you to be on guard with your behavior, it requires you to always always put your child above yourself, and it requires you to not use your child as a way to justify that the way your were raised was okay. Laziness, emtional or physical, does not translate into good parenting.

I am certainly not a perfect parent but I don't expect perfection. But I do try to be a mindful parent, an aware parent, someone who will work her entire life to end her own bad behavior because, truthfully, Finn is worth going through hell fire for, and he's worth any amount of hard work it takes to make sure he's okay.