Riding the Mommyhood Roller Coaster
This week's Evil Mother Lady confession: Parenting feels like a roller coaster these days.
So, now it is time for the next confession—parenting these days feels like a roller coaster. Life with teens is a series of repeated events. Chugging along, you greet upcoming challenging hills with equal measures of dread and anticipation, enjoy thrilling microseconds of success as you reach the top of whatever peak, then plunge into fear and worry as you charge down the hill for the next part of the ride. Commiserating with another mom over a cup of coffee, I recognized (again) the roller coaster I was on as we compared notes about our daughters. Listening to her stories as she caught me up on life was eerie. The stories could have been mine, with the names changed to protect the guilty.
I should not be surprised, but I always am when I find someone else has been there and done that. When I parent in the vacuum of not talking to other parents, I feel like every crisis, every experience is the first time this has happened because for me, it usually is. However, when I put those experiences into context with other parents, I realize there is nothing new under the sun. And sometimes when I share stories with other parents, I recognize those recurring patterns in parenting before they blindside me.
Like over the cup of coffee … as we talked, we recognized our little people were back in that stage of “I can do everything by myself” that was so endearing in a 2-year-old, but so frustrating in a teenager. It had been disguising itself as teen invincibility and general know-it-all-edness but it was the same pattern of behavior. I was just oblivious. Lower lip betraying the power of stubbornness, intense almost rude language, all focused on doing something in their unique way, without parental oversight or assistance. What was unusual was that it accompanied the same clingy, Velcro-child tendencies it did at age 2. I thought we had outgrown Velcro-children.
Now, I am not complaining. After being shown (or directly told) that I know nothing and have nothing of value to contribute, it is quite nice to be loved and hugged. But I remember that long-ago stint as the parent education coordinator for our cooperative preschool, when I lined up experts to discuss child psychology, behavior, and how to survive the trials and tribulations of toddlers and preschoolers. I recall sitting in the audience, having that aha moment as the experts (this was the Bay Area, where you can find an expert on most any topic) revealed how children, when they are pushing so hard for independence, will retreat and retrench in the safety of their parents before making their next push. It made sense at the time and it makes sense now. I just filed the knowledge away for future reference and forgot to reference it in the future through the ever-lengthening circles of growth and maturity my children experienced.
It takes hearing other people’s parenting stories for me to recognize what is going on in my own parenting. Two similar stories, different circumstances, remind me that it might not be a coincidence and I start looking for the reason. Then the guilty conscience kicks in … why didn’t I realize this earlier, how could I forget such basic knowledge. Mommy guilt rides to the rescue of the child and kicks me in the seat of the pants. Is my brain so full of stuff that I can’t keep track of it all? Has Mommy mind, the sense that you have lost your sense, totally taken over? Am I the know-nothing my children joke about? Why don’t I remember the things I learned about raising children that I need to remember? So, how about you? Do you remember or just déjà vu?
