Do you think you are the parent you thought you would be?
Do your parents think they are the parent they thought they would be?
When my wife and I started talking about having kids we had a lot of time to plan. We had a lot of time to work out if our ideals and values were the same when it came to bringing up children. As luck would have it - they were. We were perfectly aligned on just about every facet of parenting. Half the battle right?
It took a while for me to fall pregnant, a couple of hiccups, a miscarriage, a few rounds of IVF and then like magic - pregnant.
We had nine months to talk about which cot, pram, car seat, type of education...we literally talked about every single option. We had it SORTED.
The one thing we didn’t talk about at length was “what if our kid(s) have additional needs”. I don’t know that a discussion would have changed anything, but we may have had a few more ideas up our sleeves regarding what kind of support we might need.
Like most people, we found the introduction of a baby to be similar to a beautiful and blessed punch in the face. The day she was born our lives changed in almost every way, never to return to the good old days (not so far anyway).
We did pretty well in terms of upholding our new and sometimes naïve ideals, limited sugar, limited screen time, limited swearing in front of the baby. Then came the twins..
When my gorgeous twins arrived all bets were off. Miss 2yo was just beginning to show obvious signs of autism and we were dog tired. We somehow managed to get the ball rolling and had a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD2) by the time she turned three. We were desperate for some in-home support and I recruited young women who were essentially Support Workers in our home - I just didn’t know that’s what they were called.
So our ideals have had to shift a little bit. The expectations that we had of ourselves as parents have had to move to the side a smidge. There is a bit of yelling in our house from time to time, there are moments that I regret and wish I had handled differently. We don’t always have endless patience for the chaos and fighting that seems to go along with the various personalities in our home. I can’t just sit and chat with other mum friends while our children play - I’m on - even when it looks like I’m not.
Am I the parent I always thought I would be? No. But this is not the situation I ever thought I would find myself in. My children are more challenging, spirited, stubborn (not from me) and creative than I was prepared for. I’m the parent I need to be and that is not always perfect. My kids might look back one day and tell me “Gawd mum you used to yell at us a lot” but I’m hoping they’ll also remember that no matter how hard the day was when I tucked them in at night I told them “I love you forever no matter what. You make me feel proud”.
Then I head out to find my block of Cadbury’s Creation Chocolate and the Netflix remote.
ความคิดเห็น