What’s your earliest childhood memory?
Mine is of my sister. We had just gotten out of the bath and she took off. There were stairs and old carpet and a very wet little girl. She made it down the steps just fine and in a streak of lightning hit the stairs to head up and slipped and fell. She hit her face and knocked out her tooth and there was blood. She being much too young to be losing teeth, she was swept up and whisked off to the dentist. It took years for that tooth to grow back in. All of her little kid pictures look adorable with the gappy smile.
You know what I don’t remember much of from my that incident? My parents. I know they were there. We didn’t just run around unsupervised and run bath water at will and lose teeth and have no one there to watch out for us. I remember my mom walking the hall with my sister, wrapped in this blanket from one of the beds and talking to the dentist. I know they were there.
But I don’t remember the specific details of what they did. Where they were. What they said. How they reacted.
Isn’t that true of most of what happened during our really young years? We know our parents were there but the memories aren’t exactly clear. We aren’t sure how they did potty training or bed times or deciding on preschools.
So how are we supposed to use our own experiences to shape how we parent in those young years?
About a year ago I was couldn’t-get-off-the-couch-sick and pregnant and my husband worked a very strange shirt from 11am – 8pm or later. My daughter took off like a flash into the kitchen, made a turn around the counter, and headed back to me. I don’t know what she tripped on but there she was – sprawled out on the floor, face down. And she cried. My daughter who has an incredible bounce back rate after injury of any kind, cried. And cried, and cried. I looked for blood. I felt for bumps. I rocked and she cried. And I was starting to get really worried when I started checking her over for a second time. And even though I had checked her for blood the first time on her mouth, her lip wasn’t bleeding but was now extremely swollen. I knew something had to have caused the swelling so I started looking in her mouth. Baby girl’s little tooth was chipped. Now that I found the problem, she calmed down, and I worked up. What do we do? Where do we go? Is it serious? I mean it’s a baby tooth? But how do I know?
I called my husband at work. I talked to my mom. I called my husband again.
How was I supposed to handle this? How did my mom handle this? I couldn’t remember anything but the blanket and the phone call.
When we are little ones, we don’t remember much about our parents. So, it can be really difficult to remember an event, for better or for worse, that will influence our decisions in similar situations.
You know, I’m kind of glad our kids don’t remember everything about this time of life. As I admitted last week, I can’t always say that I know what I’m doing. I try my best, but I know a lot of the choices we are making now – we won’t get to see effects or results until my kids are much older. That’s great and terrifying at the same time.
Sometimes I yell when I know I shouldn’t. Sometimes I have no idea how to handle a situation so I laugh instead correct. Sometimes I do too much housework and sometimes not enough. Sometimes …
I could go on and on for any given day.
I make mistakes. I apologize. I try to do better. I fail. And I keep trying.
If we can’t remember what our parents did when were little ones, how can we hope to learn from them?
Well, here are some ideas I have.
One – it’s pretty likely that how our parents are when we are older is a result of their own journey – starting even before we were little ones. If we are willing and mature enough, we can look at our parents and see, for better or for worse, how their parenting journey shaped up and how that affected us when we were older. That also means we can make decisions and take actions to be different when our kids are older.
Also, we can ask our parents about their early parenting decisions and what they would do differently and what kind of results they had from their decisions.
We can seek other godly counsel from wise friends, both in the trenches with us, and those who walk ahead of us.
There are lots of great resources in books and classes from great authors like Kevin Lehman and Gary Chapman and wonderful ministries like Focus on the Family and Family Life.
And finally, we can (and should) pray and seek God. For our family, that meant that we learned to be ok with our journey looking differently than others’. This means that I seek God when I want to know the identity of ‘what kind of mom I want to be’ – and for me, the answer has been humbling and a learning experience.
I may not remember much about my parents and how they parented us when I was little like my kids are now, but I know that I am the product of a journey. We are all product of the journey.
Dare you to share some home runs that you’ve hit as a mom of a little one and how you learned it. Dare you to be even braver and share some fumbles you’ve made and what they are teaching you.
And if you are looking for some wise women with lots of godly counsel, check out Nina and Debbie‘s blogs. And be sure to like us on facebook. There is an amazing community of women on this journey.
-Leah
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