Not a Wasted Word

I’m sorry I went dark for a week.

I’ve been struggling. Struggling with what I wrote about in my past post. Struggling with the fact that I wrote it at all. That I put it out there. That it can’t be taken back.

After I wrote that post, I just… couldn’t. I didn’t even respond to the comments. I just shut down my wordpress tab in my browser and went about my business.

I was in denial.

My daughter turns five this Sunday. I need to stop telling the stories that aren’t completely mine to tell. The ones that belong to both of us: those stories I need to keep close.

But it’s hard because I feel really alone and I can’t help but want to put it out there so that others don’t feel so alone. I want to think that the anonymity I strive for is infallible but we all know it’s not. I can’t write about my daughter under an assumed name and be confident that it will never come back to her. If my words, here or anywhere else, ever caused her pain I would never forgive myself.

I will be drawing the line moving forward. I’m not quite sure where that line will be, or what will reside on either side. I’m assuming a lot less will be said because of the line. It’s a relief. And a devastation.

Did it seem like I put that post up with out a care in the world? I churned out some thoughtful paragraphs on parental instinct and not trusting my own, and then dropped a bomb at the end, without even the hint of a wind change.

But that bomb was not a wind change. It was a sea change.

I hit my kid. Sure you can argue about what that really means given the circumstances and the history. I’m sure it means something different to each person reading it. I’m sure it would mean something different to you if you ever had to hold such a thing, to own it, to never let it go.

For me, it’s been a very heavy burden to bear. It’s been a sign, a massive, blinking billboard, shouting at me that I’ve failed. Not because I broke down in that moment and did something I regret, something I promised myself I would NEVER do, but because I let myself end up in that moment feeling so powerless and overwhelmed.

I thought I could handle it. I thought the books and the articles would tell me what to do. I thought she would grow out of it. I thought I could manage it in the meantime. I thought it would work. The alternative was… well I didn’t really know there was an alternative.

A friend of a friend has done CPIT before. It’s how I learned about it. I know this woman, tangentially. I have chatted with her in the fits and starts that characterize multi-family play dates at the zoo or a playground.  It wasn’t totally random for me reach out to her for her thoughts on CPIT. I even, to my surprise, already had her number in my phone.

I was really glad I called her. It was very helpful to know what to expect, to both temper and bolster my expectations. She assured me it would help. She counseled that it would be slow going. She and her daughter have been at it for over a year.

Maybe it doesn’t seem like such a big deal, to somebody outside, looking in. Does it look like taking your kid to the doctor? A specialist of some kind?

It doesn’t feel that way. It feels… devastating. My child and I are going to therapy. Because she hits me. My child is just five years old. This is not what I thought motherhood was about. No one ever told me about this.

It’s hard not to think that all this is my fault. That I did something wrong. That I failed in some way. Some profound, irreconcilable way. Already the necessity of these steps weighs heavily. How will I shoulder the weight of declarations, or even suggestions, of things like “insecure attachment”? How will I keep telling myself that my choices were the right ones, that my daughter hasn’t suffered for me working full time?

How will I trust myself again?

I have been told I make things into four alarm fires. That I blow things out of proportion, get worked up over nothing. I’m trying to keep this in perspective. It’s not a diagnosis. It’s not a prediction of our future. It’s not a determination of my abilities as a mother. We just need some extra support. Eventually it will get better.

But I can’t help but think that this signals a disintegration of something, something essential, something profound. No one talks about needing this. No one admits it ever gets so bad that they can’t fix it, they can’t wait it out. I don’t know where I belong anymore, in the parenting community. I’m not a part of the “parenting kids with a diagnosis” club but I certainly don’t feel a part of the “everyone else” club.

I feel very much alone.

And I doubt anyone reading this can tell me they understand, because I don’t think they’ve ever been here. I’ve admitted to a lot of taboo thoughts and feelings about parenthood and usually someone can tell me that they get it, they understand, they have been there. But not with this. This sets me apart. This makes me different.

No one wants to be different. Especially not in this way.

I talk to the therapist for the first time today. I hate explaining it because it seems worse when I say it out loud. My only goal it to keep from crying.

I read more parenting books than most people do. I always have. I welcome hearing the perspectives of people who have professional experience with many families and have watched mindsets or techniques help them. This is not to say that I believe everything that I read, but that I appreciate that I might not know everything I need to know, or at least could benefit from, when it comes to parenting.

In fact, I’m not sure I subscribe to the advice of following my natural parenting instincts at all. I don’t know if I actually believe that we, as human beings, are endowed with precisely the knowledge we need to raise our children. We did not evolve as solitary animals that birthed offspring in isolation with the skills required to keep them safe written in our DNA. We are social animals that have evolved living in groups where older, wiser, more experienced members guided new parents through the trials of raising their children. No one expected group members to just know what to do or how to do it, they were taught the skills as they needed them, and through the efforts of many, children were raised.

Nowadays families do raise their children, more or less, in isolation. Most of us do not have a cadre of older, more experienced relatives around to teach us how to best tackle the many challenges of rearing children. And even if we do have them around they may be worried about imparting advice for fear of seeming overbearing or judgmental.

Raising children in this isolated setting, I’m not really sure how we expect to learn how to parent. Do we really have natural parental instincts that can lead the way? Aren’t our “parental instincts” just an amalgam of our own upbringing and the surrounding cultural expectations? Just because it was how you grew up, or how society deems kids should grow up, does that really make it the right, or best, way?

This is not to say I believe a certain kind of parenting should be prescribed, that we should set out to find some ideal way to raise kids and make everyone follow it. A child’s countenance, as well as her parents’, should and will greatly inform how she is raised. What works for one family may not work for another and will definitely fail for some. There are clearly many ways to raise successful, happy children. I’m just not sure we inherently know what those ways are.

It’s interesting to me that we require a period of extensive education for almost any great undertaking, and yet we can have children without ever learning a thing about what they require to thrive. I suppose we believe that since we were all children once we know how to raise our own. But that is like saying that for having once been a student one is prepared to teach. Except most people would have no idea how to best structure a classroom, let along how to productively impart information or effectively build skills. We require teachers be certified in order to teach and we require they deepen their understanding through continual professional development. Most of us even require our children’s caregivers have a certain level of education, say a Masters in Early Childhood Education, to watch our kids, and yet we don’t require anything similar from ourselves.

Reading Nurture Shock: A New Way to Think About Children was a real wake up call for me as a parent. Here was a scientifically sound book proving many of our collective parenting beliefs wrong. We have always thought that praising a child’s work would boost their self-esteem and drive them to challenge themselves to do better, but studies show the opposite is true. Praising a child’s work makes them dependent on external gratification and unable to judge its worth for themselves. Telling a child he’s good at math doesn’t give him confidence that he can perform more difficult tasks but instead makes him anxious to attempt them for fear that failing will revoke his status as talented at math.

Nurture Shock is full of surprising findings like these. Failing to point out and explain racial diversity leads children to be more aware of other people’s difference and to self-segregate in a diverse group of peers. Most of the strategies we rely on to encourage children to tell the truth just make them better liars. Every chapter of that book takes a well-worn parenting instinct and turns it on its head.

So no, I don’t necessarily trust my parenting instincts. I don’t believe I inherently know what is best for my particular children in this particular time in history (which is wholly unlike that of any previous generation). And honestly, I don’t think most parents do either. The increased levels of cognitive and emotional diagnoses, along with the alarming number of children being prescribed drugs to manage them, is just one indicator that we could be making more informed decisions for our children. It’s not that I believe the parents these children have done something wrong–I have every expectation my daughter will be diagnosed with something someday–but that the realities of our children’s lives are so different from our own that we can’t necessarily fall back on how we were raised to know how to do our best for them.

I really do believe that a lot of valuable information can be learned and applied by parents today. I also think parents should do a little research to better understand how children’s minds and bodies work and how their environment can affect them. No one knows a child better than his or her parents; with accurate information a parent is always best placed to determine what is best for their child. And sometimes parents need a little professional guidance to help them figure that out.

This past weekend I hit my daughter for the first time. We were standing on the shore of the lake when my son fell and smashed his face against a rock. I immediately tried to run to him but my daughter held me fast. As she pulled at my underwear and grabbed at my arm, I couldn’t couldn’t extract myself from her grasp. I yelled at her to let me go but her grip only tightened. My panicked need to reach my son, who was screaming not ten feet from me, reached a fevered pitch and I smacked my daughter on her thigh with an empty water bottle. In her surprise she let go and I was able to get to my crying son.

Of course my daughter was upset, but not nearly as upset as I was. I have never, in five years of being hit and kicked, ever retaliated with the same. In those moments after the incident, when I got down and explained that what I did was not okay–that it was NEVER okay to hit–and that I was so sorry, I couldn’t figure out why it had happened. Sure I was scared for my son and wanted to reach him, but what inside me made me lash out like that?

I had a long car ride home that day to think about it. Finally I realized that I lashed not in panic that my son was not okay, but in panic that I couldn’t get away, that my daughter was stronger than me, that she was the one in control. I was trying as hard as I could, and I just couldn’t get her off me. It was a physical manifestation of a fear I’ve been having for a long time, that as my daughter gets bigger and stronger, I will be less able to keep her safe when she is hurting me or herself.

Last night I dug up an email from a friend with the name and contact information of a psychologist who does Child Parent Interactive Therapy (CPIT) and reached out to her. She responded almost immediately and I’m set to do my intake interview over the phone this afternoon. My insurance won’t be accepted and I doubt they’ll reimburse me for any of the amount, but it’s clear I need to do something more than Kai.ser is able to provide. My parenting instincts, as well bolstered as they are by all I’ve read over the years, is no match for this challenge. I am admitting that what is best for my daughter and for myself is to seek professional help. I just hope that together, we can make this better.

What are your thoughts on “parental instincts”? Do you believe parents always inherently know what is best for their child?

I have read a LOT of parenting books in my life and while I’ve liked some ideas from all of them there hasn’t been one book or author or overarching parenting philosophy that I’ve really identified with. Nothing seemed to fit me, or my children, exactly. And that was fine; I didn’t mind picking and choosing what worked best for my family.

Many months ago I read Peaceful Parent Happy Kids by Dr. Laura Markham and experience my own personal a-ha parenting moment: for the first time a parenting book seemed to make inherent sense.  I really liked the ideas prescribed in the book and I truly believed that if I could be THAT kind of parent, my kids and I would be happier and more fulfilled.

{This was especially surprising as the book, and the accompanying website, has an overt natural parenting vibe, and natural parenting has always been the OPPOSITE of my thing. I haven’t quite figured out why I identified with this particular parenting philosophy when I found other natural parenting philosophies so off-putting, but I think the natural parenting slant present here is a big part of the dissolution this post describes.}

Of course, it hasn’t been that easy. I try and try and try to take care of myself, to foster a deep connection with my child, and to set limits empathetically, but I’m still struggling with all the same issues I did before, only now they are weighed down by a deep sense of personal and maternal failure.

This is not the first time I’ve read something that seems great in theory but ends up being impossible (for me) in practice. Still, the ideas seem simple enough. I need to fill my cup so I can tend to my childrens’. I need to build a deep, loving connection with them so they will feel invested in our relationship and compelled to participate in a positive way. I need to set limits with real empathy, doing away with arbitrary consequences altogether.

So I set to work attempting to fill my cup, connect deeply and set limits empathetically. Except to fill my cup I need time away from my family, which means I have to work even harder to build that deep connection when I come back. No matter how much good, quality time I spend with my daughter, she always seems to need more, which means I need even more time away to fill the cup she is constantly depleting. Setting limits with empathy doesn’t seem to be getting me very far. I’ve told my daughter not to hit or kick me a million times but no amount of talking it out later (when she was no longer upset) or getting down to her level to assure her I understand how upset she is or telling her that I will keep her safe helps her control the impulse to hit or kick. The only thing that helps her stop hitting and kicking is creating an arbitrary consequence (ie if you hit me one more time we’re leaving the park). Nothing else works.

I do believe that the ideas in this book have made me a better parent. I am more in touch with who my daughter is as a person and I’m much more aware of what she needs. I feel very real empathy for her when she is struggling and I do think that empathy makes our interactions during those troubled times more productive. I better recognize when I’m asking more of her than she can give (on a busy holiday, for example) and adjust my expectations accordingly. Spending 15-20 minutes of “special time” with her (an important tenant of the book) has an incredibly positive impact on our relationship and does make getting through our days easier.

In the end though, I don’t feel like a more peaceful parent and my daughter doesn’t seem like a happier kid. She still won’t eat if we don’t promise a special treat after a certain amount of bites. She still throws a tantrum every time she has to wash her hair. Hitting and kicking are still HUGE issues for us, even as my daughter approaches her fifth birthday in two weeks. I still feel like I’m walking on egg shells around her, wondering which next random, arbitrary event will set off an epic tantrum. The only thing that has changed is that now I feel like I should be able to do a better job, that the reason we’re still dealing with all this is because my cup can never be full enough for me to stay calm during high pressure moments, that I don’t have the time (I’m a WOHM with two kids) or fortitude to create a deep emotional bond with my daughter, that I don’t understand how to set limits firmly and with empathy instead of falling back on arbitrary consequences.

Laura Markham maintains a website (ahaparenting.com) that offers free access to hundreds of articles on specific parenting issues, for parents of newborns to teenagers. Almost every problem I’ve encountered is tackled in either an article or a Q and A post and I’ve almost always found the advice helpful. But I have not found one post responding to this issue (which is not to say it doesn’t exist, I just haven’t found it yet). Basically I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do if I feel like I’m trying this and it’s just not working (which is making me feel like a failure).

I’ve been questioning the idea that if your connection is strong enough kids will just inherently want to do what you ask. (Most adults seem more compelled to follow the rules so they will avoid a negative consequence, or redeem a reward, than simply because it’s the right thing to do). I also can’t figure out how I’m supposed to keep my cool when my daughter stares me straight in the face and hits me, or kicks me over and over again while I ask her to stop. I just don’t think I’ll ever have a full enough cup to handle that calmly, especially as my child gets older (and stronger) and my expectations change. Sometimes it feels like this kind of parenting asks too much of parents, but then again, aren’t parents supposed to rise to the challenge, whatever it may be?

I wonder what Dr. Markham would say if she read this post. She’d probably have a very empathetic, articulate response that would make me feel simultaneously supported and suspicious. She would assure me that I’m doing a good job and should keep trying and I will continue to feel like a failure and assume that my future attempts will be fruitless.

One might wonder why I don’t just ditch this parenting philosophy and go back to picking and choosing what works for me. I guess the reason is that I haven’t found anything that makes me feel like a more competent parent when it comes to these issues that we have been dealing since my daughter was a toddler. I thought things would get better by now and they just haven’t. Not even a little bit. I want to find something that helps and this is the closest I’ve gotten. I think I’m worried that if I abandon this philosophy I’ll have nothing, and nothing is even worse than failing at something I’m no longer sure of.

There is a new book out, Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings and I haven’t decided if I’m going to read it yet. We’re already dealing with sibling issues and they will only get worse as my son hits the terrible two’s (which is already happening). I’d love to get some good ideas on how to handle my two very different children and their continuously contrasting needs, but I don’t know if I can stand to feel like I’m failing once again.

Do you follow a parenting philosophy? Have you ever felt unable to parent in the way you wanted? Or that parenting in the way you wanted wasn’t providing the desired results? Have you ever felt like you’re failing as a parent?