Parental Potholes

How does the “stuff” from our childhood affect how we parent our kids today? I asked myself this once and got more than I bargained for in response. Here is what I wrote when Taggart was one-and-a-half.

That feeling of loneliness, my fear of death, my needs for reassurance and affection . . .

I pour love onto Taggart, smother him with kisses, try to ingrain the smell of his baby skin onto my memory. Working out my fears – both from childhood and of old age – on the little guy. No wonder he’s high-strung. I try to protect him from having any of my childhood fears and I so try to listen to him and honor his requests when they’re do-able. Is that spoiling him? Maybe. Maybe not.

But I remember a time when a simple request I made was not honored – and I’m not sure if it was my dad’s need for control or his addiction to cigarettes and coffee that made him decide to not grant my request – but it sent me into a rage I’ve not forgotten. I was never angrier or more bitter than I was that afternoon. I felt abandoned by my father. Bereft. Could not believe my dad would have me feel that way. And I don’t want Taggart to know that kind of bitterness at my expense. Have it tarnish him or stick like thick tar to his heart.

Here’s the rub – the challenge to this whole parenting thing: you’re trying to make right any of your own perceived lack in childhood, meet your own emotional needs – perhaps left over from childhood, and re-create the things you loved most about what your parents did right. The dilemma – the catch to all this: we’ll still do wrong somewhere, some way. Sure they’ll come out on the other end somehow usually more whole than not. But there may be scars or even open wounds we never intended and couldn’t fathom having imposed. And, we won’t know for years – if it all - what it was we might have done that could leave our children so open, vulnerable, or wounded.

I wouldn’t have it this way. And I hope I at least give Taggart the right tools and enough unconditional love so that he’ll be able to sew together the broken heart pieces or, he’ll be strong enough to seek out what he needs and repair any parental potholes I might have created.

The thing for me: I don’t ever want to lose him to some cynical, sarcastic period where we find no connection. That’ll kill me. I want his love, his approval, and his unconditional adoration for always. But alas, we return full circle to my stuff and it’s so boggy and cumbersome. I need to trust myself and him enough that I give him space and in so doing allow myself the space to breathe and let go. Of expectations of parental perfection, six-year-old little girl fears, and an eighty-year-old woman’s imagined regrets. Trust, love, let go. For today, we will live in the moment and let that be our guide. Set our compass to “whole heart” and follow its lead. There – in that space – we’ll have everything we need.