I think I always wanted to be the perfect parent — the one who didn’t make any mistakes, didn’t miss any opportunities to affirm and offered unconditional love. I didn’t have a perfect childhood. We moved a lot. There were infidelities, substance abuse, mental illness and divorce. It was chaotic. I didn’t know firsthand what good parenting looked like, but I knew exactly what I didn’t want. I had a list. It seemed like if I just avoided all the things I didn’t want to be, I could create the perfect childhood.
Of course, you know that there is no such thing as a perfect parent. No one has a perfect childhood. Have you ever considered though, that perfect parenting might be an unworthy goal? Imagine for a moment, that you could actually pull that off. You were perfectly attentive, perfectly attached, perfectly responsive to every need at the perfect time. You never made a parenting mistake. Your child grew up in a sterling environment and nothing was ever tarnished. He has lived in a perfect bubble where there is very little conflict and lots of happily ever after.
The world out there is going to come at him with unrelenting force, and it’s going to be a tremendous shock. Home is a child’s first school in the way life works. It’s the place he learns first and often best how to behave in the world, how to interact with other people. It’s also where he learns how to make mistakes, to sincerely apologize, to ask for forgiveness and to be forgiven. The most effective lessons you teach a child are the ones he observes in your life. If you never make a mistake, you never have a chance to apologize. You never get to look a kid in the eye and sincerely ask his forgiveness. You never enter into an experience with him where you work together to repair the relationship.
The goal isn’t perfect parenting. The goal is to be good humans with one another, and to learn together how to extend mercy and receive grace. Children become more securely attached when they recognize that even the grownups they trust in their lives can and do make mistakes, and there is a way back to peace from the place of the mistake. The absence of conflict is not the goal. Healthy conflict resolution is the goal. The reason they learn to trust you is not because you are perfectly above reproach. The reason they trust you is they have been wounded by your mistake and they have experienced the sincere expression of your sorrow at that mistake. They trust you because they see you earnestly try to begin again, better for the lesson you learned. You have been vulnerable enough to admit that you are not perfect and to show them how imperfect people relate to other imperfect people in life-giving ways.
Since your children are going into a world full of imperfect people, those lessons in contrition and reconciliation will be some of the most valuable ones they learn. Life is messy. We need to show our children how to clean up after ourselves when we make a mess, how to restore order, how to bring beauty to scorched places. If you are an imperfect parent, take heart. It’s through your imperfections that you have ample opportunities to teach the most valuable lessons.
Foss, whose website is takeupandread.org, writes from Connecticut.
