My firstborn just celebrated their 21st birthday today (as of this writing) and I’m feeling some feelings. The firstborn is so tricky. As parents, you want to do everything right, which is sort of the best way to do it wrong. But of course, when you deconstruct the faith with which you became parents while parenting, there’s plenty of regret to go around. I am learning to grieve through my regrets and not let it pull me into a sinkhole of misery, but I hope it’s still worth sharing some of the things I would do differently in parenting now that I’ve got a legal alcohol buying child on my parenting resume, in hopes that those of you actively parenting can learn from my mistakes.
Authoritarian parenting
I was raised to believe that the younger the child is, the more you have to control, discipline, and actively shape them into a model child, because when they are set in their ways, you will have lost the opportunity to teach them. I began to implement this with my own children but tried to reverse course as I learned about children’s needs. Because now, I realize it’s actually the opposite. The younger a child is, the more vulnerable they are and the more tenderness they need. The fear was that if we didn’t control them, they would turn out “bad” (Immoral? Anti social? Wayward?) but what I know now is that the more you meet their needs, the fuller their tank, the more they will thrive as they age.
Less Toys
For the freaking love of God, we bought way too many toys for the kids when they were young. Our kids are lucky enough to have grandparents and relatives who loved to lavish gifts on them for birthdays and Christmases and it simply got quite out of control. If I could have a do over, without a doubt, I would cut the toy sitch in half, if not more. I won’t say kids don’t need toys, cuz they’re fun, but they don’t need a bajillion of them.
Beaches and Amusement parks
This is probably specific to our family, but I had this vision of raising my young kids on the beach, sand between their sweet little toes, and their sun washed faces beaming with smiles. I also assumed all kids loved amusement parks, the thrill of rides and character themed meet and greets. Neither of the above were true in the least. They hated amusement parks and were quite meh about beaches. I spent an exorbitant amount of effort taking them to do those two things which often ended up with both parties being quite miserable.
The bigger lesson in this is I learned to parent not the vision of the children I thought I would have, but the actual children I had. These guys are homebodies, they do not need excursions or fancy trips. They were content to stay home. The money we could’ve saved. The tantrums (mom’s) we could have been spared.
Zooming out
We learned not to repeat a lot of mistakes from our firstborn on our second child, who was born 3 years later. So, so, sorry to our first. We will supply therapy bills. But the reason we relaxed so much more with the second one is because we knew that time, three years to be specific, makes almost everything okay. When our firstborn was teething and fasting from foods and crying without any apparent reason, we thought it was the end of the world and we had failed parenting and she was doomed for a life of trauma. Undoubtedly. Obviously, that didn’t turn out to be true, her teeth popped through and she outgrew that stage. That story proved to be true over and over again. With our second, we knew not to panic over struggles because we could always zoom out three years ahead. This is, of course, not to neglect meeting each individual child’s needs, but having a longer term perspective really helps a whole lot.
I kind of always knew that I would grow to regret the ways I parented my kids, because I so clearly understood that I was bumbling my way through it. What I didn’t know was how much I would be surprised and delighted by having raised my kids to adulthood. Seeing my kid become their own person beyond our family has caught me off guard with astonishment. People will tell me how wonderful they are and preposterously compliment our parenting, and I’m just like, I’m as much in awe of them as you are.
Your kids are their own. The best parenting we can do is to feed them, clothe them, educate them, and watch them do their thing.
I'm feeling a lot of this right now. My eldest is 14, and we lived with my hyper-religious parents after we left her dad up until I remarried. I've done my best to be the parent that I needed when I was a kid, because she is so much like me and I get her, whereas my folks still don't really get me. I've stepped further and further away from what they taught me growing up, my daughter has begun to do the same all on her own (for years she went along with them to church, now she hates going, and she's seeing all the things that bothered me and more, without my help). I'm so proud of her. I know I've messed up a lot, but I always try to make things right, and she and I can talk about all this freely. Having lived with my folks, she understands me really well, too! And I'll definitely be doing a lot of things differently with the baby, but keeping up what did work, assuming it also works for her. Thank you for this post, I loved it!
I just noticed how few comments this post had and it felt outrageous. I LOVE all of your posts and takes on parenting Cindy, and I am so grateful to have a seasoned parent speaking up about these things from a perspective that matters greatly to me! Thanks so much.