Nothing in particular inspired this.
In every part of life, there seems to be the need to find the sweet spot – some might call it the happy medium – between scrupulosity and laxity.
We lurch back and forth between them in our lives as individuals and culturally as well. Religiously, too – obviously.
It’s an aspect of the modern parenting narrative, too.
For it’s all over the place isn’t it?
Don’t worry, Mama! You’re doing great! You’re doing your best!
Well, guess what?
You actually might not be doing your best. You might be doing a terrible job, as it happens.
This is where the sweet spot comes in, and I’m on a search for the best way to express what that is and how to settle into it.
For certainly, constant guilt-ridden second-guessing anxiety is a drain on healthy parenting. It hurts the parent, the child – everyone. And can do lifelong damage – to everyone.
But no, the necessary response is not – Everything you’re doing is GREAT!
That’s not healthy, either. And it’s not realistic.
Every time I run across one of those You’re doing your best, Mama! posts on social media, the same string of questions races through my mind, cynically, I admit:
Has she never heard of abusive mothers?
Neglectful?
Manipulative?
Has she never heard of mothers who ignore their children’s needs, dominate them, harm them by commission or omission or are generally clueless?
I mean, if Mama is always doing her best (just because she’s Mama, apparently), why are so many of us out here still working through our parenting issues well into adulthood?
It brings to mind my experience as a classroom teacher – and as a parent.
You probably know how it goes. From the parent’s perspective, teachers and schools are the problem. They need to get on the stick and do a better job.
From the teacher’s perspective…these parents are INSANE.
If you’re a parent, look back at your parenting fails. Can you honestly say that in those moments you were “doing your best?” Could you really have not made other choices and done something more helpful and loving?
Sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes it’s no – because that’s life.
It’s not always “yes, I did my best.”
Parenting doesn’t get a pass in this regard. Parenting isn’t not immune from mistakes and missteps, and making “I know you’re doing your best, Mama” – can work to deepen narcissism, selfishness, and blindness to the needs of other – just as constant anxiety and second-guessing and standard-following can lead to, well, anxiety and, yes, narcissism, selfishness and blindness to the needs of others.
So what is the sweet spot?
That place of healthy, realistic, honest, humble parenting?
I’m not sure, and there’s no Instagram-worthy answer that I can come up with at least.
But it does seem to me to have something to do with humility, objectivity and transcendence. Sort of like everything keeps coming back to for me.
I don’t know where the sweet spot between blinkered guilt and blind arrogance is, but I can say that I think it has something to do with this:
The most important thing you can do as a parent is to give your child the inner resources to overcome your bad parenting.
That means, first of all, reminding them, through word and action, that you’re not God – only God is.
And that we know as parents we’ve made mistakes – some well-intentioned and others, well, no we didn’t do our best all the time – but that God will fill the gaps and heal the wounds, and here son or daughter – is where to find Him, and yes, you must go here because we know there are gaps and you will try to fill them. Here’s the one sure place. Here, in the life Christ leads us to, is the place to fill those gaps.
And you may have to leave us behind, and we all may have to face hard truths in the process. We understand this, for as Jesus says in Monday’s Mass Gospel reading from Matthew:
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever does not take up his cross
and follow after me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Update: From the comments –
I tell my clients that all of life is spent grieving the fact that their parents were not God. I know that seems so obvious yet I really think that it should posted on every refrigerator. I also tell that to my kids, which is very humbling. You are on point–the goal of parenting is to equip our kids with the tools they need to negotiate their way through the world “successfully”, which includes tools and methods for recovering from me.
Charlotte was Both 