Therese Oneill's Blog, page 5

What if You Really ARE a Bad Parent?

What if you really ARE a bad parent? Your friends tell you that you’re not. Though they would seem to have little to base the declaration on. They don’t see the choices you make everyday for your children. The defeatism and anger you model, the food you don’t cook, the friends you don’t screen, and the television you don’t regulate. The dentist appointment you forgot about for two years.

And even if you kid has obvious issues, the world has supplied a diagnoses for all of them. Diagnoses that take the fault away from you. As much as our culture has grown sensitive to racial and sexuality issues, it’s nerves are even more sore around mothering.

If your boy is mean, he has aggression and and anger management issues, perhaps detachment disorder. If your girl doesn’t do her homework because you gave her an iPhone to calm her unbearable hyperactivity, she has an attention deficit. If your boy barely talks, asks the same five questions all day long and daily has a melt down when he can’t have chicken nuggets, he is delicately placed somewhere on “the autism spectrum.”

It’s not your fault, or your children. You’re a good mother.  

Of course your friends might think different when they go home. Sometime we suspect those disorders didn’t form spontaneously. They were nurtured into existence by a parent’s neglect, selfishness, and bad choices.

“Of course that kid is messed up! His father is an asshole and his mom has a different boyfriend moving in every six months.”

“Giving an iPhone to a ten year old so you don’t have to DEAL with her? Because she’s irritating? Hello, that’s called ‘parenting’!”

“He’s got some development issues or something. His mom took a lot of meds when she was pregnant with him. But it’s not like she’s down there trying to stimulate and teach him. She’s just happy he’s quiet.”

And not only that, the math needs to match up. We will face nearly every parent we know and tell them firmly that they are good parents. That can’t be. We know bad parents exist in multitude. We know because half our adult friends can’t stand being around their parents. From controlled irritation to completely cutting them out of their lives, we all have a friends who still resent the way they were raised. The handicaps their parents gave them that other children didn’t have to deal with.

Part of me shudders in relief when a friend says with determination, “You are NOT a bad mom!.” And part of me wants to lie my head in my hands and say, “Cite your source. Because I can cite LOTS of evidence to the contrary.”

Please, PLEASE cite your source. Please tell me the self-denial, extra work, discomfort, kindness and wisdom I’ve used. Prove to me it happened. Give me a list longer than the one that, though invisible, is clearly pinned to my child’s back. The selfishness, the indifference, the ignoring, the missed opportunities. Each one a heavy note, weighing down her stride.

We can’t all be good mothers. It just doesn’t add up. How do you know if you qualify?

 

 

 

Filed under: Editorlessness Tagged: badmom, glowing rectangles, hurts, The Barnacles, totally mental