Parents get so much advice along the way, don’t we?

When I was pregnant with my first child, everyone eagerly shared their nuggets of wisdom with me.

There was the standard advice for new moms like “Sleep when the baby is sleeping!” – “Don’t hold the baby too much or they’ll be spoiled”. “Bring formula and Guinness to the hospital”… yeah, in my family there’s always that one Aunt.

Through every stage of my child’s life, the advice I got evolved – whether I was ready for it or not.

During my children’s toddler years, certain family members were the worst. They would see any display of my children’s “big feelings” (a.k.a. temper tantrums) as proof that gentle parenting made my kids terrors. People mixed their advice with side-eye and judgment. Natural consequences? No, “these kids just need a good spanking!”.

If it wasn’t my parenting style under fire it was whether my children ate healthy foods or had screen time.

A complete stranger once told me that allowing my 13-year-old on social media was “serving them up to pedophiles”.

Umm – Wait. What?

Through every stage of my child’s life, the advice I got evolved – whether I was ready for it or not.

As if random strangers giving me a hard time wasn’t enough, I found ways to criticize myself!

I lived with perpetual mom guilt for working too much or for not working enough. I was anxious the first time I left my kids at daycare.  At the same time, I chastised myself when I was with them “too much”. I was striving to balance quality time with my littles against fostering their independence. I wanted to cheer them on but not become the lunatic parent in screaming at every peewee soccer practice.

Oh and then there is the challenge for parents who dare to take some time for our own needs. Despite the day-in and day-out hard work of parenting, self-care may as well be a four-letter word for parents. Just last week, when mentioned to someone that I had recently taken a spa weekend I got an eye-roll and a patronizing “must be nice”. Well, yes Sally, it was bloody nice. Thank you.

What in the day-to-day, looks like good parenting? 

According to experts, good parenting looks like emotional intelligence, resilience and vulnerability in our kids. But those are relatively long-term outcomes. What in the day-to-day, looks like good parenting?

What’s missing for too many of us parents is any kind of reassurance. A cheering section that lets us know the little ways we are doing a good job.  Some uplifting sign of solidarity. One that recognizes parents as good people doing an amazing job at the hardest thing we have ever done.  Encouragement that the little things we do are the right thing for us and that the everyday choices and sacrifices we make are enough.

That even just showing up and doing our best at the hardest job in real life, might be worth celebrating.

I don’t know much. But I know this – if what gets rewarded gets repeated, and we’re not rewarded for being good parents, what’s the point? I mean other than like the reward of raising a good human being or whatever!

No matter where you are in your parenting journey you should know these Underrated Signs You’re Doing Parenting Just Right:

I’ll never forget when I was 8 years pregnant with my first child. My colleagues at work threw me a lovely baby shower.

My team member MaryAnn was one of the few folks there who had young children. Once the festivities had settled down, MaryAnn pulled me aside. As we picked through a few last munchies, she turned to me, smiled slightly, and said, “At some point, you’re going to want to throttle your toddler into oblivion. You won’t. But it’s totally natural. You might need to hide from your toddler. If you come out of hiding then you are doing just fine”.

I’m not sure how I looked at MaryAnn that day. I was probably wearing the look of naïve astonishment of a nonparent.  Maybe even sitting in judgey smugness confident that my kids would never be like that.

HA!

I wish I could find MaryAnn and tell her how long this 30-second conversation stayed with me. I would tell her that seventeen years later, this stands out as some of the most honest, wisest parenting advice anyone ever gave me.

We have all seen the memes and viral videos of moms taking various forms of timeouts. Hiding in a closet or laundry room from rampaging toddlers. Those hiding with wine may be accused of glorifying day drinking but no judgment here.

While social media seems to have accepted hiding as a productive way to survive parenting threenagers, I can confirm the need for mommy-time outs continues well beyond your children’s toddler years. If I were to add to MaryAnn’s advice, it would be that hiding is only beneficial to parents of toddlers. Not at all. The hiding spots just grow and evolve as the children do.

 

The need for mommy-time outs continues well beyond your children’s toddler years.

Most parents of teenagers are fortunate in that we can leave our teens unsupervised when we need a moment to hide.  Some parents rediscover (or suddenly develop) their love of golf. Others return to the gym or hide at home and take up cooking elaborate things or aggressive cleaning habits.

I myself take long, long walks. I know the ins and outs of my neighbourhood within a 5-kilometre radius in any direction of my home.

But all that to say – MaryAnn was also right to acknowledge it’s not the hiding that makes or breaks the parent.

If this need to hide or scream happens less than once a week you are doing amazing. If you hide and decide to return to your family instead of abandoning it all, you are the real deal. Especially if you have more than one child. If you have three or more children, I assume you simply moved the wine fridge into the laundry room or closet at some point because that’s where you basically live anyway.

At some point all of us parents feel tested. We have to choose between hiding from our offspring or losing our sh*t. Whether you are pushed to the brink after the 18^th time you’ve been asked for pink boots when you only own green ones. Or you get into your car late for work only to find an empty tank even though your teenager promised they would fill it. Or you are exhausted from the mental Olympics that are getting toddlers ready to go anywhere, ever.

Sometimes, hiding is the choice of the strong.

Anyone who tells you differently is lying. Immediately remove them from your life.

Yeah. For real. If you enjoy anything resembling a hot beverage – tea, coffee, hard cider – whatever, I’m not here to judge. Every parent who is doing parenting right has invested in a good travel mug.

Hear me out on this one.

Until my children were at least 5 and 6 I don’t remember drinking anything close to hot coffee. Or eating hot food. There was always a lukewarm tea or puke-cold cup of coffee I had abandoned somewhere.

I sacrificed beverages that had been a staple of my identity to care for a child, do laundry, or seize an opportunity to pee alone.

Now that they are older there are still more demands. I have become accustomed to the unending and constant travel of parenting.

And maybe I should be more careful using the word – “travel”.  Because some folks without children who read that might confuse the parenting version of travel with the traditional use of the word. They hear “travel” and this instantly conjures up images of beaches and fun. But parents don’t get used to that kind of “travel” at all. I mean that kind of travel is possible for parents, but like, also not.

Anyway – the qualifier here “unending” should serve as a hint of where I’m going here. Nowhere and everywhere.

Parenting travel means that I am constantly either in my car, in a grassy field, or sitting on unnecessarily hard bleachers. I find myself rotating between uncomfortably warm indoor pools and fridgedly cold ice rinks.

If I’m not personally in motion, I’m orchestrating this ‘travel” because these little humans are hell-bent on doing stuff. Since I created them I have to TAKE them to the things they want to do or find a way to get them there.

On the one hand, a good travel mug might be a sign that I’ve surrendered to the chaotic pace of parenting. But on the other hand – and how I choose to see it – having a good travel mug sends the message that I am no longer willing to sacrifice simple pleasures.

Some suggest that this is indeed my fault because we chose to live in an area with limited public transit. However, I remind those judgey bastards that my children are not going to take a bus 3 cities over for a swim meet. One where it’s just far enough to drive to and from in one day, but a 3-hour bus ride (each way) would make the 27 seconds they actually spend in the pool relatively anticlimactic.

Then there are the after-school activities, part-time jobs, tutoring, friend’s houses and parties.

A good travel mug has become my essential sidekick.

On the one hand, a good travel mug might be a sign that I’ve surrendered to the chaotic pace of parenting.  But on the other hand – and how I choose to see it – having a good travel mug sends the message that I am no longer willing to sacrifice simple pleasures.

I can and should have a nice hot cup of coffee while I endlessly wait out my teens wrapping up their closing shifts at their part-time jobs.

It is perfectly acceptable for me to make my time outside of a play place, soccer field or indoor tumble gym more enjoyable by slowly sipping my tea.

This is not giving up at all.

Parenting is a lot of sacrifice. But a more effective approach to parenting is not throwing your hands up and giving in to the ways that parenting can run roughshod over who we are.  It is a sure sign of being the best parent you can be when you accept that your needs can coexist with your children’s needs.

Even if those needs are as simple as a hot beverage in a running car.

3. You realized that “conscious parenting” – or any effective, intentional parenting style – is just a fancy term for ‘hard work,’ and you kept doing it anyway.

If you’ve been around my articles enough, you know that I had this moment when I realized that despite my own spanking-laced upbringing, I never felt good about hitting my kids. So I stopped.

Years later, I have no regrets about listening to that instinct.  But back then, even though I knew I didn’t feel good about hitting I had no idea what else to do or what being a good mom looked like. I had no models to do differently but wanted to find another way.

It was then that I more or less “Stumbled into Conscious Parenting”.

Thankfully, two of my favourite conscious parenting gurus, Yolanda Williams of Parenting Decolonized and Lisa Jean-Francois of Consciously Lisa, have provided huge lifelines for me. These mothers keep it real, simple and grounded in us. They have helped me truly accept ways to embrace a different parenting approach for my children. Without physical punishment and learning to respect brain development, age-appropriate behaviour, communication and like all of those good things.

That’s all good but the one thing my favourite ladies neglected to mention was the real endgame of “intentional”, “conscious” or “gentle” parenting.

Parenting in a way that differs from how you might have been raised is generational curse-breaking superhero work.

I’ll say it – choosing to ‘consciously parent’ or “intentionally parent” has so little to do with my children! What I have actually been doing is learning to manage myself.

It took me many years of “connecting moments”, and challenging my instinct to punish and instead allow ‘natural consequences’ to realize what was happening. I was teaching emotional regulation by showing some. I was doing the work to recognize and unpack my own nonsense (aka generational trauma) to save myself from unleashing it on my kids.

Like most well-kept secrets of parenting, I feel like nobody tells you this upfront because they know you wouldn’t do it.

There are a lot of parenting styles but they have one important thing in common. No matter what kind of parenting style you choose, any intentional choice about how you parent is a choice to work on yourself.

​For real, this is hard work. Parenting in a way that differs from how you might have been raised is generational curse-breaking superhero work. This is especially true if you’re not supported by a competent therapist, a strong role model – or both.

So yeah, if you learn this secret and continue to work on yourself, that’s a good sign you are the real deal when it comes to parenting.

 

Raising decent humans is the best sign you are doing this parenting thing right. 

I do not claim to have mastered this whole parenting thing at all. This far into the parenting game I know this much is true – I don’t know much.

Indeed, on the days when my teenagers are particularly teen-agery – I am certain, as are they, that I know absolutely nothing at all.

But I digress, there are a few pearls of wisdom I cling to.

I’ve survived raising back-to-back toddlers, then young kids and old kids. I’m in the throws of parenting full-on teenagers. And despite their best efforts, I choose to believe I still have my wits about me. So many of us go into parenthood starry-eyed and baby-obsessed. But really we don’t know what the endgame is. And we can’t know. It’s actually best we don’t know.  There are times when I’m pretty sure my wits may be all I have left at the end of churning out decent humans into the world. And that’s pretty much good enough for me.

Accepting this fate is as good a sign as any that I’m doing this parenting thing right.

Ok, so after taking this time to celebrate your parenting wins, make sure to check out our list of Black-Owned Canadian Self-care indulgences for parents. At this point I hope you’re convinced that you deserve it.