My Job, My Honor, My Privilege

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Preparing To Be Parents

When we were preparing to become parents, I remember lying in bed each night, being completely consumed by all the things we needed to start thinking about. Should we set up the nursery right away? What kind of car seat is best? Why are monitors so expensive and do I need the one that tells me if she’s breathing, what her pulse is and the temperature of her room? Where should we register for our shower and just exactly how many white onesies do we need? What kind of bottles should we buy and should I get like, two of each? Maybe 25 of each just in case? When does she start eating solid foods? I didn’t know that teaching confidence to my children would quickly move to the top of the list. 

All of the things I remember thinking about involved keeping our child alive. And to be fair, that is basically the only concern when they’re teeny tiny little blobs of flesh.

Keeping Her Alive

And most of the time throughout my daughters 23 months of life so far, I’ve been striving to keep her a healthy, happy kid. I try to make sure she’s not only fed but eats healthy food. I try to make sure she’s not only drinking but having enough water and not living off of chocolate milk. I try to make sure that we get outside for fresh air and we move our bodies. I try to limit screen time and increase book and puzzle time. As she has grown into a toddler, my main goal has still been to keep her alive.

Until a moment I had the other morning at daycare.

We were walking in alongside another mother and daughter. The daughter was about four-years-old, arms and legs wrapped tight around her mama. The mother was disciplining her daughter for something we didn’t witness, but I could gather that the girl had said something hurtful to someone else. And the mother said, “We don’t say rude things like that to people. That was very hurtful.”

I felt some solidarity, wanting to cheer her on, saying, “You go, mama!”

And then as the daughter started to cry a little, the mother said, “See? It’s embarrassing when we’re rude to other people. And you’re going to have people looking at you because you’re upset. We don’t want that. We only want people to look at us because we’re pretty.”

And I immediately stopped in my tracks.

And I was no longer standing with this stranger-mama in solidarity.

I, in fact, wanted to wrap my arms around her small daughter-with-such-a-spongey-brain and tell her to ignore the second half of what her mother just said.

In that moment, I realized… I am no longer working to just keep my small child alive.

Shifting My Perspective

It is my job to teach her self-confidence, self-love, self-worth. It is my job to teach her to be kind, loving and extend grace to herself and to others. It is my job to remind her again and again that her soul was created perfectly. It is my job to show her that life can be silly, life can be sad, life can be painful, but life will always be beautiful. It is not only my job to make sure she drinks water and eats vegetables. It is my job to help her navigate life; to navigate bullying, eating disorders, mental illness, violence. It is my job to remind her that people should look at us for our kindness, humility, and inclusion completely disregarding if anyone thinks we are “pretty.”

This mother’s comment to her daughter filled me with rage. But it also shifted my perspective on my own parenting journey. It’s not just about bottles and dirty diapers, food and screen time. It’s about morals and values.

Maybe it always has been and I was so wrapped up in the immediate needs that I wasn’t focused on the big picture. But that day, in that daycare parking lot, everything changed. It is my job, my honor, my privilege to keep her alive. But it is also my job, my honor, my privilege to encourage her to feel and express emotions, to walk alongside her when life is messy, to celebrate her… not celebrate her accomplishments achievements, but just celebrate who and all that she is.

Baby girl, you’ll always be pretty to mama. But there’s so much more to life than that. Let’s keep learning that together, shall we?

job as a parent

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Kristina
Kristina is a working mama living in northeast Columbus with her husband, Mike, their always-on-the-go toddler, Morgan, and their dog, Tanner. As a professional counselor and primary caretaker of a tiny human, Kristina understands the importance of self care, whether that’s through walks and workouts with your mom village or five minutes (if you can get that long) with a hot cup of coffee. Kristina is also a part-time wine associate at a family owned shop in Westerville, so she knows a glass of wine is usually vital for self-care, too. She’s a coffee lover, a bourbon sipper, and a kayak adventurer. Kristina hopes to encourage parents in the long, sometimes very lonely days of parenting by reminding all parents that social media isn’t real life; in fact, she spilled coffee on herself while typing this bio. To follow Kristina through the moments when you are full of love and the moments you're at your wit’s end, check out “for the love” for the love.