Growing up

Desiring maturity was never my quest. I'm ashamed to say, pursuing it was thrust upon me out of dire urgency at the ripe old age of 35. We all love to joke about parents of the 70s and 80s just propping their feet up and letting children grow up on their own. But really honestly they didn't. Sure, children of our generation had a lot more personal freedom to roam and play without orchestration or parental intervention but parents were doing all the same things as parents of this generation when it comes down to real nitty gritty. Pushing them to excel in school, restricting TV and video games, warning about dangers of promiscuity... At least mine were. But when I started parenting, I chose to block out all of the work my parents put into raising us and focus on the apparent lack of intervention in my life, telling myself I didn't need to be a helicopter parent because mine weren't. I'm pretty sure most of us look back on our childhood and see it through the eyes of a child but admittedly I probably take more liberties than average. It takes a very deliberate effort or dramatic life event to refocus on something and see it from a different perspective. And so, along came dramatic life events. The stunning realization that your plane on autopilot has an engine falling from the sky and a propeller tilting at a precarious angle. A row of black foreboding dominoes falling in a helpless sequence. And as my child finally sat in a private meeting and confided in another adult that she did not feel unconditional love from either of her parents... I was able to breathe in but not breathe out. I catalogued all of the overwhelming love I have felt for my child in the years of parenting her and saw something scary. Over the years, something crept in and disrupted our love story, frustration, communication barriers, unmet expectations, disappointment and anger. Feelings were all running the show and we were all suffering. I went straight back to my father's unconditional love of me I asked myself lots of questions about what was it he did that made me feel so unconditionally loved? A very imperfect man with a temper like a roaring lion was able to assure me of his unfailing love. How? What was I immaturely and lazily leaving out of parenting? And the word that came to me was nurture. There's still frames in my mind of his acts of love. I have a very lame habit of moaning to people about having four kids and what an emotional suck the four of them are on me. Like little leeches hanging on every side of me bleeding me dry of my will to live. Consequently, I then find myself sucked into a vortex of focusing on the negative. The more dramatically I say it, the more I believe it and the less energy I have, the less passion I have and the less love I have to give. So, I went back to my childhood, and instantly I was laying in bed refusing to get up (just like my own child) and my dad was yelling... Threatening... Dumping ice water on me... Check, check, check. I've done all of those things. Then I remember his reawakening... His shift. And he's very noisily clattering a teacup and saucer and and telling me he's brought me a warm cup of tea with honey. So, I groggily raise myself to a sitting position and hold the cup of tea. This was a brilliant scheme. It was loving, obligating and rousing. Who can go back to sleep after sitting up in bed to drink a cup of tea? There's something very encouraging about these memories. After all, one who loved me so well, made so many of the same mistakes I have and my ultimate take away is still love. So, I started small, I stopped screaming my child out the door every morning and gave her very simple loving boundaries. I told her she had to be in the car by 7:50 or she would have to ride the morning bus for a week. I expounded to her that I love our 5 minutes of alone time each week but if it's not a positive experience for both of us I would give it up. This made an improvement. But I kept having to wake her up earlier and earlier and she's not a morning person. One morning she slipped and admitted she was sleeping in the shower. I could literally feel the fireworks going off in my head I was so angry. So, I announced that she and I would have a cup of tea together every morning before her shower. This worked so well, she shaved 30 minutes off of her morning routine. Then she announced she would rather shower at night. Another 10 minutes saved. And this morning, as we sat on the couch with outr beverages moaning to one another about all of our sore muscles from working out, she laid down and put her head in my lap. I ran my fingers through her silky hair and asked 

"do you feel loved by your parents?" 

She was melted into me and yet I still got a rather teenager reply "sometimes....".