6.3.17 Best parents ever

Most of us, when we are parenting younger children, know that we are going to be the best parents that ever existed.
     In fact, we are going to be such great parents, none of the problems the other people face are going to happen to us or our kid.
     None of the behavior problems, no not-nice-kids for us. No medical problems or emotional challenges; no head injuries or special needs or difficult injuries or diagnoses. Nope, not us. Because we are doing things just just right. That's what we all think.
     Until stuff happens .
     Until the car accident or the soccer injury. Until they get beat up or get a brain injury and become an international pot lord or join a gang. Until we do jerky things or crabby things or faintly dishonest things or lightweight irresponsible things or false things or confused things or overwhelmed things.
     We don't even need to do anything lousy or neglectful or disrespectful or irresponsible to have things go awry. They can do that just fine on their own.
     One of the biggest wake up calls of life is being an honest enough loving enough reality judgment enough attentive enough limit setting enough parent, and watch the relationship slowly go wrong. What a confusing devastating surprise.
     Because we all think that if we don't desert our kid or abuse our kid or neglect our kid or scream at our kid or a bunch of things we experienced, then the relationship will be exactly how we feel about our kid.
     Loving and accepting and imperfect and fluid with good boundaries. And sometimes that happens.
     In fact, one of the cool things about having more than one kid ,is you discover you are more than one kind of parent. In kid's eyes.
     All at the same time, you can be the wonderful irreplaceable parent and the dishonest mentally ill parent and the critical unaccepting parent and any other possibility. And each kid will think they've nailed who you are, and in their own little universe, they have. But in the great big old cosmos, theirs is just one flash in the big old universal pan..
     It's just one of the things that people think, until they grow up enough to realize that a whole bunch of weird shit happens. No matter how the kind honest attentive and caring parent you are.

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