I gained some interesting insight on Instagram recently. On a video of three children enjoying a bonfire, gentle music playing in the background, were these words: “Your child only gets one childhood, and it will affect how they view the world, how they love, how they trust, and how they feel about themselves. Every time you interact with them you have the power to cherish or crush their spirit.”
I sat with that for a few minutes.
Then, I hastily tapped out some thoughts of my own:
“And they will become grownups and own their own stories and have the freedom to change the plot. And so do you. Their childhoods are not baggage unless they choose to carry it. Or unless you do. Most of us do the very best we can. Let’s not bind each other up in guilt.”
And boy howdy, did that strike a nerve.
My inbox filled. I heard resounding messages from women of two generations, my own and the one full of younger mothers who are inundated with messages like the original one. Young mamas wrote things like, “My generation is so good at making us feel so guilty about everything.” And, “The pressure to make everything perfect and be perfect or else they won’t love me or want to talk to me when they’re gown is eroding my sanity. I constantly feel like everything is my fault and I’ve already ruined them.”
From my own generation, women nodded and smiled and said, “You gave a lot of people hope with your comments. I don’t feel so alone, although I had many reasons to think I was.” We all need hope.
As we become more aware of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), the way stress in childhood impacts lifelong health, and the impact of generational trauma and poor attachment, mothers are encouraged to be hypervigilant. There is an extreme emphasis on not making a mistake that will impact a child negatively forever. There is the ubiquitous insistence on providing sterling “core experiences” lest a child be scarred for life by a dearth of intention and meaning.
But we all make mistakes. God knew we’d make mistakes. That’s why he gave us Jesus. He understood there was no chance we’d get anything perfectly perfect. He also gave us reason and agency and plenty of opportunities to own our own healing process — no matter the trauma. I know women in the fifth and sixth decades who still blame their mothers for everything that goes wrong in their lives. What a waste. (And what a fallacy.)
A child spends about 20 years under the direct care and influence of his parents, and his pre-frontal cortex isn’t fully developed for any of that time. Then, he goes out in the wide-open world and makes his own way. He will be influenced by countless other factors, and he will continue to grow and develop for his whole life. The real power lies in his own mind, where he can take his God-given reason to his God-given Savior and heal just about anything.
And that’s good news. It means that if we are also grownups who are still blaming our parents for everything, we can change the script. We can take responsibility for our own lives, including our own healing from traumatic childhood events. It means that even if we made mistakes raising our children (and we most assuredly did), they can heal and thrive when they recognize that we are all living and growing organisms who can change until the day we die.
The only thing that can defeat us is fear. If we are so bound up in fear of messing up that we run off jumping through every hoop held out by “experts,” we will indeed lose our sanity. And we will also lose sight of the fact that our children are not ours — they belong to God. In his infinite wisdom, he entrusted them to us. It was his plan that they would need us, and also that we would need them. Nothing brings us to our knees and makes us more aware of how little we control and how big our God is than parenthood.
Mamas (and daddies too), you are about to be inundated with messages about all the ways you have to create the perfect Christmas for your children. You can choose to sift through the inspiration and disregard the rest with ease. Here’s the thing: you don’t make or break someone else’s life, or even their Christmas. Maybe instead of focusing on how much power we have as parents, we should remind ourselves this Advent (and always) of the true source of power, of grace and of mercy. We could simply resolve to do our very best with the help of the Holy Spirit who loves our children more than we ever could. And leave the rest to God.
Foss, whose website is takeupandread.org, writes from Connecticut.
