The Mother I Thought I Would Be
Before we become parents, many of us carry a picture in our heads of the kind of mother (or father) we will be.
Perhaps you imagined yourself to be patient and calm. The kind of parent who listens before reacting, who doesn't raise their voice, who knows just the right words to say when their child is struggling.
Then the children come.
And somehow, in the middle of the ordinary chaos of meals, homework, sibling arguments, messes, bedtime battles and endless responsibilities, you begin to meet another version of yourself.
A version that gets irritated more easily than you expected. A version that sometimes says things you wish you hadn't said. A version that snapped a little too quickly and reacted in ways that remind you of your own parents.
I Used to Think
I used to think I'd be the kind of mother who stayed calm no matter what. Being in control of difficult situations and staying composed was something I took real pride in. Until I had children.
Once, my six-year-old child had a huge meltdown over the dinner table. It was a full-volumed crying and shouting tantrum. Almost immediately, I found myself feeling so much discomfort within me and I started to respond in annoyance. Even though I knew in theory that I should be co-regulating my child calmly, I ended up losing control of myself and raised my voice hoping to make the tantrums stop. Of course it didn't work; the wailing became even louder.
I am not proud of it. Especially when I feel I should know better.
With each experience like this, I became more aware of my own limitations, my triggers, my patterns of relating. Sometimes, confronting all that can be very uncomfortable as I see the parts of myself I would have wanted to keep hidden.
Here's What I've Come to Understand
A trigger isn't really about the moment it shows up in. It's old. It's usually pointing backward to something I learned long before I had children of my own. My child does one ordinary thing, and suddenly I'm not just responding to them. I'm responding to something underneath.
I reacted so strongly because I grew up being scolded for having big feelings. Underneath my reaction was an ingrained belief that it is bad to have big feelings. My visceral discomfort was a reaction to that belief.
This is the part of family work that doesn't get talked about enough. We want to believe that raising healthy children is mostly about the right parenting skills. And skills do matter. But beyond that, I've had to keep doing the work within myself, because my beliefs shape my relationship with my family through how I act.
I am not who I thought I was before I had children. That's not a failure. It's information.
This is also what I bring into the room as a Family Work Practitioner. I don't come into this work as someone who has parenting figured out. I come as someone who has been stretched, humbled, and continually changed by motherhood. I come having learnt that the parent's own self-awareness is often the actual starting point for change in a family, more than any technique we could teach.
If you've ever surprised yourself with your own reaction to your child, like snapping at your child, or shutting down at their outburst, you're not doing it wrong. You're being shown something. Perhaps the gap between the parent we thought we would be and the parent we actually are isn't simply something to feel bad about. Perhaps it is an invitation to become more aware.
Becoming more aware of that helped me to spend less time being upset with myself, and more time being present with the work I can do within myself to be a good enough parent for my children.
The question worth sitting with is: "What is my reaction trying to tell me about myself?"
This week, I hope we can reflect on what remains important to us as parents, even as we confront the idea we are not what we thought we would be. And that is ok too.
Humbly,
Elaine
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