Knowing Myself

I'm realizing, yet again, how bad a predictor I am of myself. In general, I feel like I'm fairly good at predicting how I will react to something or someone. I thought it would be the same with parenting. This is not turning out to be true.

First, I thought that I would never enjoy being a stay-at-home mom. Not me, no way. I am a professional, and I'm good at what I do, and I really like it. When I was pregnant, the idea of giving up my job brought me to tears on a number of occasions. I felt like I was being robbed of something, not being given a gift. (Part of this is probably due to the fact that we weren't trying to get pregnant, so it wasn't like I'd chosen to take a professional time-out.) But the 6 months between when Riley was born and a week ago were amazing. Hard, absolutely, but amazing nonetheless. After the rough September transition when Ryan went back to work and I was on my own all day for the first time, we got into a groove and I really enjoyed my days with her. I also ended up doing a lot of cooking and reading about nutrition, which was great. I don't know why I thought those days would be so bad.

Second, I thought that I would be a relaxed, easy going, roll with the punches kind of parent. My parents weren't this way, and I wish they would have been. I see the effects of over-parenting all the time, both in me and my students. I figured that understanding this would be enough to help me make different choices. And it is ... sometimes. But when you start with a little wee one who can't do anything for herself, you have to be really intentional each day about taking a tiny step back so that she can grow into her own person. The tendency I have to control her life (forged primarily I believe by the way I was parented and the cultural parenting norms of the people I grew up around) run deep and are, at times, hard to resist. Giving her the freedom to make mistakes that she'll regret is going to be ridiculously difficult.

There are more, many more ways in which I've mis-predicted my responses to becoming a parent. She is another step in my own education of myself. Hard. Beautiful.

Thanks Riley.