Letting Go of the Fantasy of Perfect Parenting

When I learned I was pregnant back in late 2003, I immediately had images of all the wonderful, magical parenting moments that would accompany the many milestones my child would experience. Looking through magazines and wandering baby stores, I couldn’t help but be hypnotized by the beatific dreams of motherhood that I was creating in my mind.

Fast forward a few years. Simply put, I was wrong.

Parenting is not exactly what you see on those cute diaper commercials and in the glossy pages of the mommy magazines.

It’s hard, sometimes, not to feel like a failure when you compare your actual parenting moments with the ones created by advertisers and, yes, even your friends on Facebook. I’ve spent more time than I care to admit wondering if I was on the wrong line when the perfect mommy gene was handed out.

So where had all those magical parenting moments that I had dreamed of gone?

The moment when my son took his first steps? Missed it. Those first holiday presents? Kids not interested in anything but the boxes they came in. How about the first time we took them to see Santa or any other character for that matter? Hysterical tears. First soccer game? He ran off the field. And my personal favorite: surprising my son with a birthday trip to see Harry Potter in Universal Studios, FL, which resulted in a hysterical tantrum because he suddenly didn’t like surprises and needed to know about things sooner.

Many important moments – and even some small ones – didn’t quite live up to the expectations I had concocted in my mind. Yes, there were adorable graduations and really fun birthday parties, cute Halloween costumes, and belt promotions in Karate. All that is fantastic and I am grateful for those moments. Truly grateful, because I know deep down not every parent gets to have those experiences with their kids.

But anytime I tried to contrive a special moment for my children, it has fallen flat. And that sometimes makes me feel like a complete failure. Take, for example, one Christmas season when we were stuck indoors during an early snow storm. I decided we should start decorating the tree, so I put Christmas music on, put cookies in the oven, and had my husband start dragging boxes out of the attic. I couldn’t stop myself from thinking of this moment as a page out of the Currier and Ives gallery . . . until my kids starting fighting about who would put the next ornament on the tree, causing several glass balls to crash to the floor. Tears and some yelling followed. And that pretty much ended the moment – badly, I might add.

I’m not quite sure why many of us moms create and cling to these (somewhat artificial) parenting moments. Is it advertising? Competing with our friends? Some deep-seated need to be a perfect parent? Whatever the reason, lots of us are out there, dreaming of these special times – and we often have to deal with the disappointment when they don’t go the way we imagined they would.

In recent months, I’ve actually tried to stop controlling outcomes and instead better manage my own expectations when it comes to my children’s reactions and my own parenting hopes. They are kids.

They are going to fight at the worst times, cry during a school performance, get sick on a major holiday, suddenly hate sand on your beach vacation, and run off the stage at the very dance recital they prepared for all year. And we parents? Well, we have to support and encourage them as we swallow our own disappointment and acknowledge that these big moments are not what parenting is truly made of.

No, the beauty of parenting is in the everyday, in all the messy bits that make up life.

We are not failures if we don’t create the perfect moment for some childhood milestone. We are doing the best we can, everyday. Listening to my daughter sing the wrong words to “God Bless America” at graduation (“from the mountains, to the fairies”), watching my son try really hard to learn a roundhouse kick (and continually falling), listening to my kids play a board game (without fighting), all the hugs and cuddles . . . these are the true magical moments of parenting. These are the blessed moments that make up the very short years we have our little ones in our exclusive care.

So, yes, I was wrong about what parenting would look like and feel like all those years ago. But now, as I look back, I know that all these minutes, days, and years of parenting are filled with hundreds of beautiful moments – simply because my children were there with me through all of them. And that truth, in itself, is quite magical.

* This article originally appeared on The Mommy Vortex.