I love being a mom. My kids are hilarious, compassionate, creative, joyful, and occasional geniuses. I love watching their personalities, interests, and talents develop. It’s amazing to me how different they are from each other, and the vareity of ways they are so different from my husband and I. (For example, I have a theatre kid with a beautiful singing voice. Where did that come from? Anyone who sits near our family in church knows that that talent was not inherited from his parents.) But I have noticed that I have started to feel exhausted and overwhelmed by the demands of modern day parenting expectations.
Parents today are expected to do it all. We have to have our kids enrolled in a non-stop carousel of extra-curricular activties starting at the age of four. (If you start any later, your kid will never make the school team or the cast or first chair, etc.!) They’ve got to go to summer camps and travel leagues. And we can’t just buy our kid toys! We have to get them VR headsets and videogame consoles and hoverboards and smartwatches. By the time our children are nine years old, we parents are expected to drop $50 on a name brand tumbler and $150 on name brand shoes for them. And when they turn ten years old, it’s time for us to buy them a $1500 iPhone. I mean, what in the upsidedown universe…? Has parenting always been this complicated?
Before I had kids, I had a vision of the kind of mother I would be. (No one is a better parent than a person without any kids but with plenty of opinons, am I right?) My husband and I started off our parenthood journey knee-deep in what is commonly referred to as ‘attachment parenting’. I had two drug- and intervention-free childbirths. We attended and later taught Bradley Method childbirth classes. We used cloth diapers and co-slept. We did extended breastfeeding and baby-led weaning. We were babywearing, amber teething necklace-wearing, essential oil using, organic-only food eating granola parents. And when we just had two little kids in a little house and I was a stay-at-home mom, it worked out okay.
But then the next thing we knew, we had four children in a larger home with two dogs and two cats, and my husband and I were both working outside the home full-time. Three of our kids have special needs. Two of our kids have experienced early childhood trauma. Three of our kids are on presciption medication. In addition to an annual well-child appointments with the pediatrician, we also see a pediatric genetic neurologist and a developmental pediatrician. There are counselors, occupational therapists, physical therapists, speech therapists, social group, evaluations, annual reviews, and so many acronyms. Most of the ways we were parenting before had become unsustainable and ineffective. We were not the typical family and there was no way we were going to be able to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak, in terms of parenting ideals.
When you have kids with special needs, most traditional and/or popular parenting methods typically don’t work. The problem with that then becomes the judgement of other adults. Has anyone else noticed how intensely hands-on parenting has become lately? Why does everything feel like a competition? Why is there so much pressure and where is it coming from? At a time in a world where nothing you do as a mom feels good enough, I throw up my hands in defeat. I now describe my parenting technique as 80’s style and although looks messy and it won’t win me any awards, it’s made me a lot happier.
For me, 80’s style parenting is simple. It fosters children’s independence while at the same time encouraging children to actively participate in their role in the family. Eighties style parenting is about giving yourself the grace to do whatever works in that moment for your family without the pressure to make everything perfect for your children’s lives. So if you’re also a working mom who’s feeling overwhelmed or if you’re any kind of mom who is maybe looking for some strategies to shake up your parenting routine, join me in this next phase of my parenting path. Become an 80’s mom with me.
- Our home has a hierarchy. There’s a lot of talk these days about respecting children as individuals. My husband and I care about our children’s feelings. We love to give them choices and chances to be in charge. We want our kids to develop leadership skills and the ability to express their emotions and opinions. We also know that their frontal lobes are not fully developed and they are still learning to regulate emotions and distinguish right from wrong. For reasons like those, in our house, the parents are in charge and have the final say. Yes, there are times when our kids don’t understand the parents’ decisions but they know that they just need to accept it. Of course there are tantrums and pushback with eyerolls at times. Nevertheless, for the sake of safety, order, and sometimes even just harmony my husband and I make the rules and the decisions in our household.
- My kids have regular chores. Our culture values individuality. I value and nurture the unique personailities and interests of each of my children. At the same time, “no man is an island.” Societies thrive because individuals bring together those unique talents and work in tandem to serve the needs of everyone. Family is a child’s first community. They learn to be part of a team which in turn teaches them to consider the needs, wants, and perspectives of other people. It’s is not a parent’s job to be their child’s lifelong servant. It is a parent’s job to help a child develop their independent self-help skills so they not only function independently but also as a productive member of society. When I need to remind my children to complete their chores, I ask, “What have you done to help the family today?” In our house, there are a list of chores my children chose from. That being said, each of the choices is a relatively simple activity that can be successfully completed without supervision. It defeats the purpose if my husband or I need to be lording over them to monitor their work. The objective is two-fold; We want them to take ownership of the work and we also want them to see the value of the work in terms of how it supports our family as a unit.
- My kids spend time together. Our family schedule gets crazy fast. My husband and I both work outside the home. Our children go to public schools. Each of them has their own extra curricular actitivies and appointments. Often, in order to check everything off of the to-do list, my husband and I need to ‘divide and conquer’. However, whenever it’s at all possible, we all go do things together as a family. We run errands together. My kids are expected to support their siblings by attending their games and performances. My kids are expected to play together, without parental guidance or interference. They also expected to negotiate and work out small squabbles amongst themselves by themselves. The older kids take the little ones for walks, read with them, play games with them, etc. Encouraging their sibling bond is priority for my husband and I. It’s hard to think about but the reality is that (in the best case scenerio) our kids will outlive us. For many families, the parents are the glue holding it all together. And for that reason, sometimes families ‘fall apart’ once the parents pass. I would hate for that to happen for my children. I hope they will always feel like a connected family.
- We limit our kids’ screen time. And then we force them to go outside. Look, I know it’s hard. I know I catch myself as a parent spending too much time on my phone. It’s easy to let kids play on their devices. They’re quiet, they don’t fight, they’re happy. But we know that it’s not mentally nor physically healthy. What is healthy is spending time outside strengthening those gross and fine motor skills. I direct my children to go outside and play, just as my mother did to me when I was young. My kids go out and ride their bikes. They take our dogs for walks around the neighborhood. They go sledding. They go swimming. We’ve invested in play structures, a tire swing, and a zipline in our backyard. This is how children of the 80s and 90s experienced childhood. We spent countless hours running around with friends in our neighborhoods. We played impromptu games of kickball, hide-and-seek, and ghosts in the graveyard. Sure, we played video games and talked on the phone, but there was a balance. My kids definitely enjoy their screen time, but it’s balanced with time spent playing outdoors.
- Sometimes my kids get bored. And that’s okay. It is a parent’s responsibility to provide ample opportunity for their children’s mental stimulation. It is not a parent’s responsibility to entertain their children during every waking hour of every day. Young Gen Xers like me spent lots of time during our childhoods dreaming up activities, roping friends into their plans, and then executing their adventures independently. Our parents were not our personal cruise directors. A little boredom breeds creativity and strengthens executive function skills. Like most kids, my children have plenty of books, toys, games, dolls, arts and crafts, etc. with which to entertain themselves without their parents’ interference. When my oldest was little, she had a favorite picture book where in the very beginning the parents explain to their daughter that they had some work to do around the house and she would be responsible for “making her own fun today”. This is a line still used in our house today; “Umma and Appa are busy right now, you will have to make your own fun.”
- My kids spend time almost every day reading. They don’t have to love reading. They don’t have to read alone. They can read whatever they want. But they must some an uninterrupted 20 minutes reading something most days of the week. Why? Because reading is a life skill. A worldwide epidemic coupled with an increase in the use of technology for across all educational settings, has affected our nation’s reading comprehension and basic literacy skills. It’s also a good way self-regulate and experience calm and quiet. It stimulates the imagination. It builds vocabulary. It builds inferencing skills. Strong reading skills is a gift you can give your shild and yourself. My mom used to sit on the couch and read her own book while I read mine. Sure, it was good for my brain but it was also good for her mental health. It was an easy way for us to both get a small break in the day.
- Everyday life is not social media-ready. The house is often messy and full of unfinished projects. We have tacos for dinner way more often than we should. Socks don’t match. Hair is unbrushed. Nothing about my home decor is color coordinated or in what would be considered as any particular design style. I may not be as ‘gentle’ or ‘free-range’ as other parents these days. But my kids will always have a safe and comfortable place to come home to where they are accepted for exactly who they are.
