The Hardest Part of Parenting

It’s not all of the annoying logistics- the non-stop breast and bottle feeding, the dirty diapers, the laundry, the constant cleaning up of messes.

It’s not the high pitched crying and whining and constant never ending needing of something.

It’s not the crazy-making around how to discipline and teach and mentor and try as best we can to raise somewhat kind and functioning little people.

It’s not even the fact that we have to somehow keep them alive. Or the reality of lost alone time.

The hardest thing about parenting is this: It is not our job to prevent our children from feeling pain. Our job is, actually, to allow for their pain and to walk them through it.

I might be just speaking for myself, but I don’t think so. In all of the years of work that I have done supporting mothers, in all of my personal relationships with other mothers in my life, and as a mother myself, I’m pretty sure that this one is the hardest.

It is not our job to prevent our kids from feeling pain.

We must make space for our kids to feel the pain that comes with being human.

Our children will feel pain throughout their lives. They will experience pain and grief and loss and sadness and anger and worry and uncertainty and we are not meant to protect them from that. Far from it. It is actually our job to allow their pain to exist and to walk with them through it to the other side. You know why? Because it is our job to teach them what it means to be human and humans feel pain. Often.

Ugh.

Somehow we have lost respect for this part of being human. We want our kids to be brave and resilient and curious and strong and yet we seem to think that by spending our time trying to prevent them from experiencing pain, we are helping them get to these places. Of course, this isn’t the way it works. Bravery and resiliency and curiosity and strength can only be born out of grief and loss and pain and hardship. Without the pain there is simply no practice in resiliency.

Our kiddo comes home from school and is tearful because her buddy wouldn’t sit with he at lunch. His friend didn’t invite him to his birthday party. Her pet dies. We can’t be there for his school play because of a work meeting. She doesn’t make the sports team. He forgets to study for a test and fails. She witnesses an argument between you and her other parent and she worries you will split up. You do split up and he now has parents who are divorced.

And we so often think: Shit- It is my one job to prevent my kiddo from experiencing pain and I couldn’t even do that.

So, we call the parents. We reach out to the teacher. We contact the coach. We overcompensate because of the missed play and our guilt around it. We hide our distress around our own sadness. We do whatever we possibly can to step in and cushion those little people who we love so much from feeling any of it.

But this, my friends, is a disservice.

Instead, it is our job to give them a place to cry, to be angry, and to feel uncertain. It is our job to validate and hold their hand and give them hugs and remind them that we know they are ok even when they feel so awful. It is our job to make room for their own problem solving (with our help when they want it of course). We have to bite our tongues and refrain from fixing it all for them. We have to just be in the pain with them. And then celebrate their resilience when they find their way though.

Call me crazy, but THIS is the part of parenting that feels the hardest. Because each time our hearts break just a little bit with theirs. And so we too need to rely on our resiliency and bravery and curiosity and strength to get through. To show them that it’s possible.