Sometimes I wonder if I'm too selfish to be a really good parent. Because, as we all know, when you have kids, you have to put your own needs on the back burner. And I'm finding that challenging these days.
Maybe it's not just me...after all, Gen X has been accused of being an entirely self-absorbed generation. Oh, we're not the only ones. I don't think Gen Y or even the Millennials are much better. But we were the first to be labelled as such, and coming after the Baby Boomers--who were known for their activism--made us look worse.
Generation X's decades were the 80's and 90's: better known as the Greed Is Good decade and the Slacker decade. "Give me money, give me more" segued into "Whatever, dude. Where's my car?" Me, me me...we grew up with it being all about us.
So making that transition to parenthood and it NOT being all about us anymore can be really, really hard. Not as hard as I'd feared, though, because there's something in those pregnancy hormones that numbs the selfish part of a woman's brain (for a while, at least). But at some point, even though your love for and devotion to your child has not diminished in any way, the ME, ME, ME (!!) area of the brain begins to awaken.
And that's when the trouble begins: After five years of everything being all about my kids all the time, I'm finally starting to lose it. My patience (in short supply to begin with) is waning, and my poor 2-1/2-year-old daughter is getting the brunt of it.
She's at the stage where everything has to be just so: When she goes to bed at night, she has to have Dora and Blue Bear right next to her, and her pink blanket must be draped over her precisely the right way. The whole nighty-night process has become an exact science. If I do something wrong, she freaks out and we have to go back and repeat the last step...and thenmy last bit of patience dries up. I snap.
The warm & fuzzies now over, I raise my voice and rush through the remainder of the bedtime routine. Which of course doesn't help my little one stop crying. It only makes it worse--I realize that. But by 8:30 at night I've had it and just want to veg out (or, more likely, finally fold the laundry that's been sitting in the dryer all day).
So I march out of her room and leave her there crying. She's upset but so am I. Ten minutes later she's still crying. My brain about ready to explode, I stomp to her room and push open the door.
"Go to sleep NOW!" I order.
"Blue Bear!" she wails.
She can't find her precious blue bear, which is hidden in the blanket. I give it to her and she stops crying. That's all it takes. For ten minutes I did nothing while she cried...just because I was frazzled. I feel terrible and mean and like she deserves a better mother.
The sight of my little girl wrapped up in her pink blanket, cuddling Blue Bear, her cheeks wet with the tears she'd shed while I was trying to tune her out, breaks my heart.
"Go to sleep, baby girl." I whisper through tears. "Mommy loves you so much."
And she'll try to be more patient from now on.
Wow - I think you're being a bit hard on yourself. Ten minutes of crying? Maybe if you'd pelted her with blue bear repeatedly you might have some grounds for thinking your kid "deserves a better mother."
ReplyDeleteI know, but I still feel bad...and I was THINKING of pelting her with Blue Bear, so that adds to the guilt. And it's not like this was the only time something like this has happened.
ReplyDeleteNot a huge deal, I know. But seeing my poor baby with tears all over her face that could've been prevented easily just made me sad.
I am from a different generation (X-hausted) but some things never change. There’s a lot of guilt involved in being an intelligent, reflective parent. The hardest thing for me was the realization that I was usually upset about something totally unrelated to my kids, but took out my frustration on them because they were, well, handy. And, yes, I was no doubt selfish, if that means putting my own needs ahead of theirs some of the time. I still feel badly about it. But as I said to one of my (grown, pregnant) children this morning, we all do the best we can, in the place where we are, at the time that we’re there. We really do. And when our kids grow up and have kids of their own, they get it. But I still feel guilty, like I could’ve been a better mom. It comes, I guess, with the territory.
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