Parenting.....

If you would have asked me what parenting was prior to being a parent, in all my glory of learning about development and psychology, I would have probably given you the Wikipedia definition, "is the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, financial, and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood," and love....yes love, everyone knows the love part. I had good parents and look, I turned out ok. What was it that they did again? I asked them and they said... "I don't know, we did what needed to be done."

When I became pregnant, I read everything I could get my hands on from what to expect and what to eat during pregnancy through child development, temperament, and sleep habits. When our baby was born, I was going to be prepared. I felt confident that the three shelves of books (and websites that I visited daily) had prepared me for what was to come; and if not, I felt confident that I could go back to those references, call up my parents, and find an answer to any question. "I got this."

Then, I became a mom and quite frankly, freaked out. "I totally don't got this."

Like all new parents, we had lots of questions. And I utilized all of the lovely books that I had so thoughtfully purchased, and several of the websites that I had bookmarked. The information was very helpful and useful, most of the time.

And yet, nothing prepares you for the profoundness. Yes, the intense, deep, heartfelt, sincere, great, overwhelming, far-reaching and exhaustive state of being a parent. The suddenly my eyes are open to a whole world of rights and wrongs, safe and unsafe, trustworthy and not-so-much, and gray areas…so many gray area situations, people, places, and things in this world, that I have no control over. The “I have no idea” what I’m doing, but am trying to do my best, winging it, working at it, and hoping for the best….and please God let them know how much I love them and help me not to mess this up.

Parenting.....

Parenting is tough. G. Kenneth West calls parenting "the most difficult and important task of life."

Parenting is work. Schlutheiss calls parenting "work that bonds a person to society, though unpaid, offering reciprocal benefits, and is interdependent upon others for success."

Most of us learned through observation only, and either parent as we were parented or parent in reaction to how we were parented. Either way, we are all experiencing the ultimate on-the-job training.

I’m still reading, researching, trying my best, and praying a lot. I know now that we have little control over things outside of ourselves, that most of us are trying our best, that no one way is the right way, that there is a plethora of researched parenting approaches that offer some pretty good tools, that it’s ok not to know and we all make lots of mistakes, that I can always learn more things, that babies are tiny miracles, that we as parents have been given an opportunity to connect with another on a level that cannot be explained.....and yes….love, always love.