Parenting observations on guilt and failure

Originally appeared on Medium

I am an average parent.

Imagine a social media platform where instead of choosing what photos you post or information you share, the world is simply shown your worst moments; and not in the sense of being vulnerable and real with your commentary on a given situation — but actual displays of you at your worst.

Despite allusions to this possibility in film and media, thank goodness such is not the case. Our edited versions of mass communication can endure. If I had to guess the group of people who would have the most unfavorable footage, however, I imagine it would be parents. Unfortunately, the worst parenting moments still have an audience: your children.

If I am honest (or vulnerable; or real), I must confess that I spend an uncountable number of moments lathed in guilt. Whether how I interact or fail to interact, rarely do I handle any given moment with what could be deemed ideal parenting. I yell too much, I forget and lose track of what’s important, and my attention often diverts in uncanny directions. I am, at best, a very average parent. If we saw every moment of your parenting, I’m guessing we would declare you as average, too.

What Causes “Bad” Parenting?

Let’s consider the odds, though. For those glorious souls who are able to pull off the ideal in every waking and sleeping moment throughout every single day, I would be glad to hear your secrets. The reality is that you, as a finite human being, have an immense responsibility to other souls in which you are with them almost constantly and where they depend on you absolutely. You also come with a varied personality, a history with baggage you may have inherited, a finite perspective within finite time, and the general human limitation that you can only see the world through your own eyes. You also might not know everything. You could read lots of books, but you still would probably not know everything.

At any given moment, you only have what you have.

And you will react in any given moment in reflection of what you have.

Which occasionally leads to moments that conjure forth guilt in response to how we reacted with what we had.

The key here is proximity and that proximity reveals reality. The best people are typically the ones we don’t know. Everyone walks around with various layers of junk and the more we see those people, the more we see the nefarious layers that compose their complicated soul.

Maybe the simplest way to explain parenting guilt is by being honest that to be a parent is to be in such constant proximity with human beings that they see everything you bring to the reality of life: your gifts, your love, your hopes, and your dreams; but also, your perspectives, your flaws, your failures, and your shortcomings. They see your past and limitations alongside of your potential and your good intentions.

Your presence comes with all of it.

As our children grow, they see even more of us. Maybe teenage rebellion has less to do with our children’s development and more to do with how the more they see of us, the more they see the inevitable imperfections. Your proximity reveals the holistic composition of your being including the parts that aren’t ideal; especially when our natural reaction in the immediacy of a moment includes some of these messy bits.

But that’s what you have to work with:

A complicated personality;
with complex perspectives;
and a varied history;
using the physical limitations of mortal life;
and the default egocentrism with which you move through the world;
to respond to circumstances in the heat of any moment.

It is as if your life is this compilation of tools and when a moment strikes, that’s what you have to work with. My worst moments as a parent often correlate with mental and physical exhaustion or emotional instability or times when my limited purview of egocentric life distracted my noble intent. Sometimes, the immediacy of a moment causes me to reach for tools that I even told myself I wouldn’t use. Engrained history is a powerful trait that is difficult to overcome.

Resorting to predetermined processes is a survival mechanism. Parenting is an act of improv and, if we’re honest, there are lots of scenes that we haven’t exactly trained for. Hence, we instinctually react within the constraints of our being. We often react with what we know.

This kind of honesty is helpful. It doesn’t make these reactions good. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t improve the toolbox. In fact, the goal of most adventures is to prepare the soil of your soul in a way that the immediate response improves over the default.

I suppose, however, that this honesty can offer a semblance of relief to parents like me. Looking at the unfiltered landscape, I begin to realize that this is all quite normal. Even in my parenting miscues, I am quite average.

The Invitation of Good Enough

The important and practical response to this — at least as far as the future is concerned — is to do the expected: read the parenting books, emotionally and mentally mature, deal with your past, and develop the kind of presence that looks more and more like the ideal as much as is humanly possible within our finite limitations. Work to be a better person who can be a better parent. Train for the moments of parenting improv yet to come and learn from our past performances.

That tinge of guilt we feel can actually be a useful metaphor to continue to grow. Guilt can be paralyzing if we decide to bathe in it; if we sense the conflict of possible failure and let it sit like a stagnant swamp. Guilt can also be a form of internal conflict that helps us see that a better world is possible. It is an opportunity for transformation if we would just figure out what is clogging the water and let it flow into something better.

In the meantime, however, the primal invitation when we recognize our visible inadequacies is to be okay with good enough. You are offering your children an imperfect world within an imperfect world. Can you do so safely? Can you, despite moments of miscues and poor momentary reactions, still be in connected proximity with them? Can you walk with them in solidarity through this imperfect world?

It might be helpful to simply confess that good enough might be all we have. Being average with all of the junk you bring to the table might actually be a giant leap forward.

This means that the next invitation of good enough is, to be honest about it — in fact, our children should hear it from us; otherwise, they will fill in those ignoble gaps with their own obscure imaginations. I have had uncountable moments of error, of failing to embody the ideal. I have also had uncountable moments of apologizing. My children, certainly, do not see me as perfect. I am not held as some other-worldly, untouchable figure. I’m just a larger version of them doing the best I can with what I have.

What happens when someone with authority admits a blunder? What kind of solidarity arises when the person apparently in charge takes responsibility for an outcome? Can we be honest that we are sometimes irate and inept and unfair and tired and depressed and incompetent and confused and uncertain and that we make mistakes, too? And can we do so with deep love and good intentions?

Of importance here is that abuse, neglect, and harm can’t be ignored. The sentiment, “I’m just doing the best I can,” is fine, but if your best is destructive to another human being then your children don’t owe you additional chances. Good enough has an important adjective: good.

Good enough implies having their best interests in mind while prioritizing their ultimate well-being; even if it is simply walking with them through the mess.

We tend to think that everything hinges on how we perform as parents. There’s good and bad news here: It doesn’t.

The primal invitation of parenting, then, is simply learning how to understand, manage, and walk through the messiness of complicated people trying to do the best they can with the inchoate reality of what we have.