Goal setting and resolution making seem contradictory to parenthood. I can set the goal that Max will be potty-trained by July or that Lucy will be reading by October but I’m not the one that actually has to achieve these goals – they do. I remember years ago my parents lamenting the fact that parenthood NEVER stops. This idea that you are done when the kids are 18 is a ridiculous myth, because it is when they turn 18 that the job gets hard. It is at 18 when kids start making the really important life decisions and who is still there guiding them? Mommy and Daddy. How do you know when you’ve finally crossed the finish line of parenting? When are we done?
I suppose each parent defines parental success differently. Whether we consciously or subconsciously realize it we are all raising our children to be a certain kind of person and it is this idealized person that is our imaginary finish line. I want my children to be educated, inquisitive, imaginative, charitable, honorable, emotionally strong, physically healthy and spiritually happy.
Am I all those things?
I can’t help but wonder if my parents have passed the parental finish line. I just called my mother the other day to ask her how to thread the bobbin in my sewing machine. I still call them to share my successes, ease my burdens, and calm my worries. Isn’t that still parenting? Have I become the kind of person they set out to make me? And even if I have, does that free them from their parental duties?
I suppose our responsibilities lessen, our children grow less needy of us and us of them. Now, while Lucy and Max are little they need me to survive and as they enter young adulthood they will continue to seek my approval. Some day, some undefined moment they will need neither of these from me. They will be able to care for themselves and their family. Will I then cross the finish line? Parenting is made for the long distance runner. The person who is slow and steady, consistent in spirit, and bottomless in strength. I am not eager to reach the end of this race and would like to prolong the finish line for as long as possible.
Thank you to Michelle from Scribbit for the ideas as I send my post off to her monthly Write-Away Contest.
As a parent you never complete the task at best you simply move on to grandparent with somewhat reduced responsibilities but they never go to zero. Your children will always look to you for approval, advice, care, sympathy, and love. You never lose your concern for them and you never stop worrying about them — parenting is a lifetime commitment. It is a wonderful adventure and I have never regretted it — well not for longer than it takes to once again make a fist or to stop clenching my teeth. So how do you measure your success as a parent? I’m not certain I know but I think you measure it by the care, concern, and love you receive from your adult children. If your adult children still call you, still seek your advice, still show concern for you — then I call that successful parenting. But parenting is a one pass operation. You have one time at bat and you don’t know how well you did until it is all over.
I hear that this is the way it is for parents and I’ve wondered if I’d find it to be that way with our kids–you never stop.
Is there a magic cutoff period when
offspring become accountable for their own actions? Is there a wonderful moment when parents can become detached spectators in
the lives of their children and shrug, "It's their life," and feel nothing?
When I was in my twenties, I stood in a hospital corridor waiting for doctors to put a few stitches in my son's head. I asked, "When do
you stop worrying?" The nurse said, "When they get out of the accident stage."
My mother just smiled faintly and said nothing.
When I was in my thirties, I sat on a little chair in a classroom and heard how one of my children talked incessantly, disrupted the class,and was headed for a career making license plates. As if to read my mind, a teacher said, "Don't worry, they all go through this stage and then you can sit back, relax and enjoy them."
My mother just smiled faintly and said nothing.
When I was in my forties, I spent a lifetime waiting for the phone to ring, the cars to come
home, the front door to open. A friend said, "They're trying to find themselves. Don't
worry, in a few years, you can stop worrying. They'll be adults."
My mother just smiled faintly and said nothing.
By the time I was 50, I was sick &tired of beingvulnerable. I was still worrying over my children, but there was a new wrinkle
there was nothing I could do about it.
My mother just smiled faintly and said nothing. I continued to anguish over their failures, be
saddened by their frustrations and absorbed in their disappointments.
My friends said that when my kids got married I could stop worrying and lead my own life. I wanted to believe that, but I was haunted by my mother's warm smile and her
occasional, "You look pale. Are you all right? Call me the minute you get home. Are you depressed about something?"
Can it be that parents are sentenced to a lifetime of worry? Is concern for one another
handed down like a torch to blaze the trail of human frailties and the fears of the unknown? Is concern a curse or is it a virtue
that elevates us to the highest form of life?
One of my children became quite irritable recently, saying to me, "Where were you? I've
been calling for 3 days, and no one answered! I was worried."
I smiled a warm smile. The torch has been passed.
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