It is super annoying when parents constantly talk about their children and the very normal things they are learning, but as a parent, I get it. You start off with this tiny, fragile and completely useless baby that is unable to do anything for itself at all other than cry and evacuate its bowels and then through your own parenting and teaching, support and tears, it grows and develops and starts to learn and do stuff for itself.
A first word. A first step. A first joke.
And you know there are going to be a million firsts and while you look forward to some, you fear many other, especially once they are outside of the your own circle of control. At some stage, all you can do as a parent is hope that you have done enough that your child has adequate skills to face the world ahead and, their eyes open so they can evaluate their surroundings and apply what they know, well.
You also know - they are going to fail. A lot.
And no matter how much you may want to be there for them, it isn't always possible, so you hope that they fail in areas that they can recover from and learn, so that they pass the tests where failure is catastrophic.
Parenting is very easy these days.
All you need to do is sit them in front of a screen from a young age and train them to be content consumers, creating nothing. They will sit quietly and stay out of your hair as long as there is a screen to watch with some inane show with bright colors and a lot of movement.
Good parenting is much harder.
Being active with a child, helping them discover and develop their skills, while making sure that they are picking up the understanding to navigate a rapidly changing world, that the parents themselves often struggle to negotiate. While it is filled with so many moments of joy, the chores and the fears are ceaseless, always present, always there in the background, waiting.
And all of this has to take place while the parent is trying to live a life too, maintain relationships with adults, hold down a job to pay the bills and of course, find some personal reason to keep on going. It is no wonder so many people say "their kids are everything" and that they "do it all for their kids" because, it is incredibly hard to find the time to take care of them and take care of ourselves.
The "dad bod" can be earned, it isn't necessarily laziness.
But, you have to show up and show out too - to set an example for the child so that they have a role model they can look up to, rather than one that they fight to get away from. Yes, they will all want to grow their wings and move from the parent, but the apple doesn't fall far from the tree and it is good for them to understand, they are likely very similar and as such, will face similar personal challenges.
And face them they must, because at some point, there will not be anyone there to catch them when they fall, no safety net left, other than the one they carry with them through their skillset and personality, their tenacity and resilience - if they have any at all.
At some point, the floaties come off and the conditions of "swim or sink" come into effect and as a parent, the hope is that there will be a lot more swimming than sinking, especially as the water gets deeper and even tippytoes no longer touch the bottom.
You want them to be happy, you want them to be brave, you want them to explore the world and reach their potential. Yet, you also want them to be safe and protected. You want them to be warm and loved in a world that can be incredibly violent and cruel.
And you know they are never safe. There are always risks.
You know that you can do everything right and they can do everything right and still, failure happens and no matter who or what is at fault, it is your child who has to live through and deal with the experiences they encounter. The good ones and the bad ones.
At some point, those many smiles of a carefree life with the occasional tear at a scraped knee are replaced as the weight of the world starts to bear down on their shoulders. And like the parent, responsibility of taking care of themselves and meeting the needs of others becomes a constant process of compromise. Potential put on the shelf, dreams discarded and broken hearts that no parent can mend.
It is as scary as fuck.
Which is why most parents try to block it from their minds and refuse to think about the worst of the worst outcomes, relying on the warnings of "don't run down the stairs" to suffice as lifelong lesson to apply to every trial they will face. You hear those parents constantly warning of the dangers of everything and wish that they would let their children be free to discover for themselves, but I do this too.
It is incredibly hard not to.
I don't want to raise a child filled with the fear to act, but I also don't want to raise a child that doesn't understand the risks of how they act in various conditions. They need to be attentive and skilled, but it is easy to slip into the long list of warnings instead of the many small failures and lessons learned from them.
And this is why it is so easy to raise a child on a screen, because there they can be safe, sitting on the couch, nothing to cut them, no one to harm them.
But, safe for how long? What happens when they get out of the home and they discover the reality of the world is nothing like the reality of the screen? What happens when they realize that all the skills they watched other people perform, they do not possess at all?
Are they safe?
Or will they struggle?
Struggle is a good teacher. Pain excellent homework. However, if it is met with resistance, fear and panic, it becomes consuming, an excuse - a lifestyle habit.
When the world happens to us, rather than we being agents of our own experience, we become passengers on the rollercoaster, with no choice of the direction, nor the curves along the way. We have no control and therefore, no ability to find peace, tranquility and the space to care for ourselves, or love others.
Today was the hottest day of the summer and probably the last hot day for 2022 and for the first time, Smallsteps took her floaties off. After one trial run with my hands under her belly, she dived in and took her first strokes through the water under her own power. She only made it a few feet, but it is a start. I want her to swim well.
Because, I remember the first day I learned to swim.
It was my birthday and we celebrated after hours at an aquatic center a friend of the family owned. After taking my first strokes in a children's wading pool, I moved into a larger pool filled with confidence, while the rest of the family were elsewhere. I swam my first few feet into the middle and ran out of energy, with the bottom was well beyond the reach of my tippytoes.
I literally drowned.
I resigned myself to my fate and found peace and tranquility in the depths, filled with calmness. And, just as my eyes were closing for what I believed to be the last time, someone jumped in and performed resuscitation, bring me back.
I failed.
But I got a second chance.
I didn't tell my parents until almost twenty years later, so they never knew how close they had come to losing a child.
I hope that Smallsteps will always feel that she can come to me with anything, but no matter how much a parent cares and wants to support, the child's life is their own and the majority of it, is lived out of sight of the parent. Especially the worst of it.
All I can do is my best to help her have what she needs to survive.
But all of these ordinary milestones in life, are magical to me daily. And I am guessing I am not the only parent who sometimes sits in awe of it all and wants to share the magic with others. Even if they don't care or understand what is so special.
It was a good day.
A special day.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
