I’m talking to me.
When kids are born, we often look for similar features to their parents. He has his mother’s eyes or his father’s smile. She has her grandmother’s red hair or that nose is from the Polish side of the family. It’s natural. As they grow, we continue with these observations, but we add in personality, interests, skills, and temperament. Do they have a love for football or an ear for music? Are they remarkably even keel or have a great sense of humor? We attribute these to family members past or present. Sometimes we ask where these traits come from because no one in the family has this characteristic.
The same is true for the negative traits. We can pass on to our kids physical ailments like diabetes, a higher risk for cancer, or depression. In addition to genes, we raise our kids in ways that add to unhealthy eating habits, too much screen time, or a propensity for anxiety. Why do we do this? We’re human. We have our own collection of positive and negative traits, and sometimes what we bring and what our kids bring to the relationship connect in such a way as to bring about a unique mix of good and bad traits.
We find joy in the positive traits we see in our kids and sorrow or even guilt when we see the negative ones.
We ask:
Is this my fault?
Could I have done things differently?
Is it too late to change things?
And on and on.
Sometimes our own guilt and struggle is magnified by others heaping on that guilt by blaming us for all that is bad.
Most parents are doing their best, and they love their kids. We are imperfect, hard working, average ordinary people going through a normal(ish) life. But we often feel like we are subpar, failures, or the worst parents ever.
I have asked myself how I could stop feeling guilty, and I don’t have an answer.
So what do we do when we find ourselves trapped in the blame game?
Stop it. It’s as simple and as hard as that.
Remember:
- No one asked me what genes I wanted, and I didn’t get to hand pick the ones I passed on.
I passed on some great things, and I need to take some time and remember those as well. - I messed up as a parent. A lot. So did my parents and so has every other parent in history.
My kids messed up, just like every other human in history. - I am still growing and still trying to improve my parenting even with grown kids.
- I am not parenting in a bubble. Society has done it’s far share to create problems for my kids.
- God had two kids in a perfect world, who had perfect genes, and both of them messed up.
- Stop comparing your kids worst traits to other kids best traits.
- Don’t imagine Instagram worthy moments are the only moments other people have.
- Ask God to help you let go of this burden. It’s not meant for you to carry.
I still beat myself up. I am sure that won’t suddenly stop. However, reminding myself of this when the sorrow and guilt come in or when people try to cast blame is a good place to start.
All we can do is the best we can do. Pray, parent, repeat.
