PARENTING PIVOT: MOM! I AM AN ADULT.

It is not an oversimplified and overused statement, that parenting is the most rewarding and most challenging undertaking of the human experience, especially when you are committed to doing it “right”.   The way I see it, parenting is a kaleidoscopic experience of multiple emotions and rewards and disappointment that continuously intersect at any given time and without warning.  Parenting has had me in a chokehold and has challenged me to extend love that keeps evolving in every parenting experience that I have had with my child.   Parenting requires unconditional love.  Parenting requires introspection; parenting requires self-awareness; parenting requires honesty; parenting requires fearlessness; parenting requires self-love, and parenting requires sacrifice.

As I have observed, especially in the last decade, I am not alone in my parenting quest, blunders, and varying forms of success.  Many other parents, especially mothers, with whom I have conversed, have admitted that parenting has been their most challenging undertaking.   Aside from the obvious financial (and other societal) challenges that many of us face, I have found that parenting is also quite the task for other pertinent reasons, to include (but not limited to):

• Personality differences:  more often than not, we are learning to adjust to living with children whose personalities are forming and who sometimes become completely different individuals to who we are and who we thought or wanted them to be.  When this happens, there are often personality clashes, and it is the parent’s responsibility to manage the parenting process and make the parent-child relationship less combative.

• Unhealed traumas:  Those unresolved issues in us prevent us from approaching certain parenting challenges with the correct parenting posture.

• Unrealistic expectations:  our children are unique individuals who are learning.  In that learning process, they will make mistakes.  They will also choose different paths than those we want for them.  We must accept that this is a part of the life they are called to live and not force unattainable expectations unto them.

• Ignorance:  If we don’t know, we can’t grow.  When our children display certain behaviors, instead of blindly defining the issue, investigate the issue so that the appropriate tools can be utilized to reach an effective resolve.

• Conflict resolution deficiencies:  parent-child conflict is inevitable, which requires a deliberate approach to achieve an amicable outcome.  Even though we are the “real adults” in the situation, and often with our degree(s) in tow, we do not always possess the specific know-how to resolve ensuing parenting issues.

• Lack of awareness:  Many of us operate blind to who we are and our shortcomings and even blinder to who our children are becoming.  Because of this, we parent with a lack of understanding on how to navigate the parenting space, unique to the child we are parenting.  Invariably, the outcome will be counterproductive, in spite of our genuine intentions.

Honestly, if I were to delve into each reason extensively, this blog could go on for pages.  Aside from the inevitable, we are called to revisit our parenting styles when things change with our children, and these things can include anything from mindset to mental health challenges and personal growth search (because they are trying to find themselves).  But my focus is how do we pivot our parenting practices in the face of the onset of adulthood.  My daughter is 19 years old, which makes her an adult – well technically since she is currently college-bound and still reliant on her parents.  She has been at the stage, for almost two years, where she wants to do her own thing with her peers, and in her own time within her own boundaries.  But this is what I am talking about, because why did I even need to qualify her state of adulthood by interjecting that she is “technically” an adult.  Therein lies the problem.  But I digress.

This is not, however, a unique requirement of a young adult and certainly not unique of the challenges parents face across borders and cultures. Those of us who are trying to do right by our children will encounter many roadblocks as they themselves navigate their own growth journey.  We are all just people, despite our unique oppressions or access, trying to figure this parenting thing out. When asked about her parenting role in a recent Oprah interview, Kerry Washington stated “it is a requirement in parenting to be willing to be uncomfortable in order to allow your child to grow; it is a requirement to ask yourself what you need to do better for them and not what they need to do better for you.”  This statement made me ponder on what I have often deemed my parenting imperfections and shortcomings to be and that which has caused my daughter her own set of frustrations with me.    If we are willing to address our parenting blunders as we go along, the specific frustrations will not linger.  They may, however, morph into another frustration because of the complex nature of the parent-child relationship.

As I examine my own parenting journey, I am the very first to admit that I sometimes feel lost – like I have not a clue about what I am doing, which makes me feel as if I am in a constant state of confusion and failing-forward.  Fortunately, God has kept me in those moments as I wear my prayer like a second skin. What choice do I have?  Still, there are some tough times, because there is no parenting-specific manual; each child is unique to your context/environment/who they are and are becoming and therefore requires a different parenting strategy.   Yes!  I said it.  STRATEGIZE, because yuh affi siddung inna silence and tink careful bout yuh next move (you must sit in silence and think carefully about your next move).

My daughter has been my greatest blessing and my greatest lesson.  She is one of the smartest human beings I have ever met; she is beautiful, and as complex as she is smart as she is lippy.  Parenting her has made me question everything about my capability, my capacity, my potential and my resilience.   But that’s not because of her; it is all because of me.  There are many things in me that needed to be addressed in order to be better to her and for her.  Some of those things I brought into the parenting process, while others I developed in the process of becoming a mother and while being a mother (internal and external of me).  In this realization, I see that I am sometimes ill-equipped for some of the reasons itemized earlier.  It could also be that I have not prepared myself sufficiently enough to parent a child whose many facets are so different and unique and new to me.  For example, I am an introvert (and this is not as sanitized as an example as you may think).  I cherish and sometimes crave being alone.  I don’t always want to speak and sometimes I literally cannot speak.  Even though she gets my introversion now (in the last year), in the past, this was a challenge because she always wanted my attention, and I could only give as much as my brain allowed, and my brain could not do “all the time.”  As she now transitions into adulthood, she continues to learn that her mother is an actual human with her own human concerns; but more importantly, I am still learning that I need to transition the ways in which I actively love her within the ambits of her evolution and her requirements.  Naturally, she no longer requires the “parenting” she did two years ago, and I see that. I am also learning to establish new boundaries as well as to respect the boundaries she has set for me.  I say “learnING” as opposed to “learnED” because a nuff time mi affi wheel and come again (check myself and then execute a do-over). The conundrum is for us both to find a balance` in her new adult space.  In my estimation, she doesn’t quite understand that my concerns about her safety are contextual to the crazy climate.  Obviously, it is not always possible for me to know what she is doing and with whom.  This is where I must trust my prayer and my well-wishes for her and allow her to operate within the parameters of her own standards, without having to report every action to me, regardless of my intention.  Because we have not yet fully established/found a happy medium, we sometimes butt heads.   Apparently, mothers and daughters butt heads in a more intensely than daughters and dads, even when the “parenting blunders” are similar.  Psychologists argue that once there is the lack of acceptance (or the perception thereof), on both sides, then there will be a relationship challenge.  Mothers, they say, must learn to respect their daughters’ choices, values, personality, and opinions.  I’m sure that many mothers, like me, will argue that it is not necessarily a lack of respect, but a desire to protect our daughters (children) from the vulnerabilities that we KNOW are unique to women and girls. 

Be that as it may, the parenting pivot becomes necessary at each stage of the parenting process if we are to sustain the relationship we want with our ever evolving offsprings/wards, and especially necessary if we want them to become well-rounded adults with good mental health. Anything outside of a deliberate consideration for their changing mindset and needs, will yield a less than favourable response to our parenting “interventions.” This becomes even more urgent once they get to the age when society deems them adult, whether they can financially afford to fend for themselves or not.  Honestly, once we have gotten to this point, it is now time to allow them to teach us how to parent them in the wake of their becoming….