Parenting Blog

My Aha! Parenting moment this week happened on the beach.  I live in New York City.  I'm not a city person, but that’s where my husband’s work is, so that’s where we live.  The whole year long I wait for August, when I’m lucky enough to spend the month on an island off the coast of NY.  I write, my husband comes out on weekends, and the kids work as counselors at the summer camp where they were once campers. 

Every morning I get up, get the kids fed, and take the dog to the beach.  I do some of my best thinking on these daily walks, and I always come back happy, feeling completely blessed.  I also take a plastic shopping bag, which I fill with the trash I come across on our walk.  Most of this is plastic balloons, plastic water bottles, plastic bags, or other plastic that washes in with the tide, so I shudder to think how much plastic there is in the ocean.  I never find beach glass anymore, just beach plastic.

So why is this an Aha! parenting moment?

Well, I was thinking about why I do this.  The beach is pretty empty, so no one really notices what I'm doing, and those who do may well assume I'm a bit nuts.  My little bag of trash every day is hardly going to cleanse the ocean.  So does it really matter?  Why bother?

What I realized is that I do this for my kids.  Yes, so they’ll have a cleaner ocean to swim in.  But also as an act of faith.  An example that our every action matters.  That even when a positive action seems invisible, seems hopeless, it always matters to do the right thing. I want my kids to know that.

The other Aha! is that my beach cleaning is a lot like parenting.

Much of the time, parenting feels invisible.  Whether we speak harshly to our toddler, whether we let our five year old eat junk food or our nine year old stay up too late, whether we harden our heart towards our teen.  Who's to know?

Almost worse, who notices all those acts of sheer heroism?  Walking the floor at night with a screaming baby, navigating the supermarket with our two year old, answering yet another "Why, Mommy?" question from our four year old, helping our seven year old learn to control his temper, patiently insisting on civility from our 11 year old, keeping a sense of humor with our 14 year old, controlling our panic when our 16 year old misses curfew...

Putting our needs aside time after time and summoning up the positive energy to love our kids through all those moments where any sane adult would have a tantrum.  Who even notices?  Maybe -- especially -- not even our kids, who aren't known for expressing gratitude to parents.

But parenting isn't really invisible.  Like nutrients, our every act is a building block in our child's emotional foundation.  Think of one of those nutritional pyramids:  Every day our kids need 12 hugs, 10 acknowledgments for positive behavior,  6 fun interactions, 4 limits set with empathy, 2 opportunities to learn a skill that will increase self-esteem, and 1 bedtime story. 

Dr. Haim Ginott says:  “Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.”

I think he’s right.  Children really are like wet cement.  And we only have so much time before it dries.