Better Than I Used to Be

I know how to hold a grudge
I can send a bridge up in smoke
- Tim McGraw

When I was growing up, and was on the receiving end of something that made me angry enough to give a sarcastic response, lash out, or be vengeful, my mother always had the same response: "Don't stoop to their level." That's good advice; but difficult to live. My passions run deep whether it's excitement, anger, love, or irritation. And so when people irritate me or make me impatient, my knee-jerk response is to say something snarky.  My daughters don't hesitate to remind me of this tendency and I try to be more aware of it and keep it in check.

When I was growing up, if my parents did something I didn't like - that I really disagreed with - I remember making mental notes to myself not to do that as a parent to my own kids.  A lot of it had to do with respecting my maturity and willingness to be responsible about things.  Where we could, Greg and I tried to give our girls the information and resources to make their own decisions, help them through processes rather than tell them what they needed to do, and give them the skills to handle the bigger picture.

I was talking with a friend of mine today who is a parent educator, and that the way our husbands were raised weren't the kind of parents they wanted to be.  How both of them were determined to "break the pattern" so to speak, of the way they were raised and do things differently with their children.  And they both did.  Largely, they both did it by trusting us, their wives, the upbringing we'd had, and the strong desire to do things differently.  But she said that in many of her parenting classes, the desire to do things differently doesn't just make it so.  These young parents have to seek out information and skill sets and role models to replace the only patterns of parent-child interaction they are familiar with.  Some also need counseling so they can deal with, and put into perspective, the baggage they carry with them as they try to parent differently.  Some need to actually shield themselves from the toxicity that was their up-bringing in order to truly break the cycle.  My friend put it well when she said, "We all have baggage.  It's just a matter of how much and what kind.  And what are we willing to accept from others?"

My daughters have been raised by two people who took parenting seriously enough to put it above their own needs and above their own marriage - and for that I am grateful.  There are many people who will weigh in on the pros and cons of this philosophy, saying the marriage must come first, or that if you're not fulfilled as an adult you can't make your child happy.  But to help that child become productive, loving, disciplined, empathetic, and all the other traits we desire to see cannot happen by accident, cannot happen if it is put on the back burner, or "after" the adults are fulfilled in other ways.  There is no one right way to make it happen, but there are a lot of ways to make it go wrong.  I believe that in the end it comes down to treating children as the people you want them to become.

I'm learning who you've been

Ain't who you've got to be