The Hardest Thing

Most people will tell you that parenting is the hardest yet most rewarding role you’ll ever have. The older he gets the more reward I feel as I watch him explore, communicate and experience joy. Parenting has not yet trumped opening a café as the hardest thing, but one day it might. There are hard bits but they are not usually to do with lil’ AB. After nights where he wakes 8+ times he gets called a ‘little punk’ as I claw my way to a hot shower, and the pain lingers only until breakfast is digested.

The tough stuff for me is the mountains of information accessible, offered and (sometimes) forced upon you. I now realise I’m not very good at ignoring suggestions or disregarding comments that make me feel incompetent as a mummy.

So, this week the time came for me to draft up my Motherhood Manifesto. Surely six months is long enough to start publishing definitive works on mothering! Anyway, all I’ve narrowed it down to is a concept that helps me sort the important things from the ignorable. One of the things I’m choosing to ignore is a recommendation in a book saying;

‘Flat cotton cot sheets should be tumble dried so that they are slightly damp for easier ironing and a smoother finish’ and in regards to outfits ‘ensure that all labels are ironed flat’.

For us, we want to parent Angus with principles that show and teach him about things like love, trust, courage and gratefulness. There are many efficiencies in our society that can easily tempt me to cut corners in order to achieve an outcome. We’re not interested in these attractive outcomes if it means AB cops the raw end of the deal. The concept of “doing whatever works” will be something we want to avoid because we think it favours our comfort and convenience over his learning. The process is more valuable than that. The important stuff is how we all get to our desired outcome. Sure, for housework and menial tasks “doing whatever works” is a legitimate motto – but not in relationships.

I hear the sniggering of you older and wiser parents! I am content to let you snigger at my Manifesto. I already know that we will make many decisions in the future just because it gets us through the day. But we want to give more consideration to what our actions mean to a little bubba who knows nothing and will learn almost everything from us in the next few years.