The Messy Truth Of Parenting Whilst Healing

You know what I find hardest about parenting?

It’s knowing where to draw the invisible line between guiding my children's actions and holding space for them to make their own mistakes.

In other words, gauging to what degree I am ready to potentially face my biggest fear - that of getting it ‘wrong’.

Sometimes it’s easier just to hold space for them to make their own mistakes - it means I avoid creating potential conflict in the now, and I can abstract myself from any potentially disastrous consequences by telling myself that I had nothing to do with them.

But that's only possible when I either don't really care about what I perceive to be the potential outcome for their actions or when I perceive that this outcome won’t involve their health, happiness or long-term wellbeing.

It’s when their actions may have potential consequences that I do care about, or rather, these might fall in areas I feel that I should be responsible for as a mother, that things get messy.

Because then it's about deciphering not only how strongly I should 'suggest' a course of action in order to persuade them to do something that I feel may be safeguarding them in the long run.

But also what unconscious motivations may be lurking behind my desire to be obeyed.

Do I have any real authority on what will or will not safeguard their long-term happiness or health?

And even if I do, is it worth ruining the present for by filling it with conflict and resentment?

Is my intent fuelled purely by selfless altruism or am I in fact projecting my fears from my past onto a situation that is not actually at all the same?

In other words how much is my inner child’s fear of doing the ‘wrong’ thing and of feeling guilty and shameful afterwards, influencing my parenting of my actual children?

This is where I get stuck.

Because in the end, I know that whatever happens, it will all be my fault. It always is. That’s part of the job description.

But I don't mind being blamed for short-term inconvenience if I believe I have guided them to do the right thing in the long-term.

It's defining the 'right thing' that gets me every time.

And having to pit my desire to be seen as the 'good parent' now against my fear of being seen as the 'bad parent' later - for not having done more, for not having being the 'adult' in the relationship.

So I muddle through. Decision by decision. Not knowing whether I have sown the seeds for terrible consequences or not.

Trusting that my actions will all balance out in the end. Soothing my inner child and reparenting her through her fear of failure. Remembering that my kids are not me.

And hoping that they will learn (quickly) on the job so that they can soon relieve me of the sometimes unbearable responsibility of taking repeated, sometimes seemingly random stabs in the dark.

This is the messy truth of parenting whilst healing and healing whilst parenting.