I wrote most of this blog post months ago, before we knew anything about coronavirus or COVID or shelter-in-place. Re-reading it today, the topic feels especially relevant. Parenting during a pandemic is most definitely not what any one of us signed up for… Moreover, that “trapped” feeling is ubiquitous right now - parents and non-parents alike. So where can we find the choices this week?
As part of my required continuing education, I watched a recorded lecture presented by two experts in the field of child psychology and brain development. They were talking about how we can better understand the way our kids’ brains work to be able to respond more compassionately, and therefore more successfully, in moments of overwhelming feelings. Overall, the material they presented was great - but there was one line that really bugged me. Describing the very challenging work of staying calm and staying with a child’s difficult emotions, one presenter said, “this is, after all, what you signed up for.”
“Speak for yourself,” I mumbled to my computer screen. It may be what he signed up for when he became a parent, but there have been numerous moments during my parenting experience that have not been what I signed up for. I get what he was trying to say - you don’t get to pick the child you will parent, you don’t get to pick a convenient time for a meltdown, and when you become a parent, you do, I guess, “sign up” to love and teach your child in whatever way that child needs you to love and teach them. But here’s the thing, you enter parenthood without any capacity to understand or predict all that entails.
A fellow manager friend and I used to vent about the parts of our jobs that fell into that “and other duties as assigned” part of the job description. Like the time I found myself in a hardware store buying a tree. Or the time I sat reading a book to a group of half naked (and less than half listening) preschoolers after one especially creative child had led the class in a parade of puddle splashing and the teachers were busy changing everyone’s clothes. It turns out, parenthood, like many other “jobs,” is one huge “other duty” after another. {Speaking of jobs, here’s a humorous take on what the job description of “mother” - or in the author’s words, “the Dumbest Job Ever” - might look like: Job Description for the Dumbest Job Ever by Kimberly Harrington (https://nyti.ms/2FngvPj)}
There is another interpretation of “what you signed up for,” though -- one that has helped me, at times. This interpretation rests on the idea of choice - and the choices we make when we become parents, and every day after when we choose what kind of parent we want to be. When we see ourselves as having a choice - not as needing to do something - we give ourselves back some control, and even in the moments when we feel the most backed up against a corner, there is usually some choice we get to make. The choice when our toddler is screaming to scream back, the choice to ignore, or the choice to sit calmly with those intense feelings, among many many others. Or less specific to parenting: the choice when we’re overwhelmed to bury our head in a pillow, to cry, to take it out on the person nearest to us, to clean the closet, to bake banana bread, to write a to do list and tackle things one at a time. (I’m not endorsing any one of these as better than any other - they each have their moments!)
What is useful in considering what we signed up for is not the idea that we must obey the terms of a life-long contract. That just leaves us feeling trapped. What’s useful is the idea that we are constantly choosing to be parents - some days we choose to do it one way and some days another, but every day you wake up and don’t disown your children, you’ve chosen to be a parent. You don’t sign up to be a parent just once, you don’t sign up for every major life event (ahem, pandemic) or minor inconvenience that gets thrown at you. Instead, you are daily -- continuously signing up, choosing how you will respond. And each day that job description is going to look a little different because you are different, your child is different, and the day is different. All those parenting books, the “experts”, that specialist whose webinar I was watching - they have ideas about ways to support children’s development, to support parents, to create successful and healthy relationships. They likely have some good explanations for why their ideas make sense, they probably even have some science that backs up the case they’re making, and they might also be great ideas that you find helpful and supportive. And when that’s the case, wonderful! But in the other moments, let’s remind ourselves: their ideas are just that -- theirs. We get to choose how we will parent, and what makes the most sense for us and our children. Because so much of life is not what we signed up for, and we still get to choose how we’ll respond. Some responses may be more productive than others, some may feel better than others, most will have consequences (good or bad), but choosing to respond one way in this moment doesn’t mean you’re signing up to do that forever. You can only sign up for right now.