Good/Hard
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Family on Wednesday, August 04, 2010 11:28 PM
Every once in a while I go through the archives of my personal blog and look at the pictures of my daughter as an infant, read the words that I wrote about her during those early months. It’s good for me.
We had fertility struggles before Camilla, and once she came along I was overwhelmed by how grateful I was for her. Also by how hard parenting was, of course, but foremost I was aware of how much I loved her.
I’m glad I wrote about it, because it’s so much more complicated now.
I cherish life’s paradoxes but they also confuse me (they’re supposed to, right?) and one of the most complicated paradoxes of parenting I’ve experienced so far is this: my love for my children increases as they grow, but so does their ability to make me feel like the top of my head is going to fly off.
This evening I put Camilla to bed and ninety seconds later she was standing in the hallway whining at me. I ordered her back to bed, she resisted, and the situation escalated. I stood there trying to keep my voice calm, summoning all the patience I could find while my daughter plopped, cross-legged, onto the floor like a protester at a sit-in: thirty-two pounds of civil disobedience.
Except this situation didn’t feel civil. It felt insane. And though I eventually managed to diffuse it with some negative incentives, and kissed my sweet girl goodnight before leaving her in her bed again (she stayed in it this time), my stomach churned for a while afterward.
I feel like it’s pretty easy for me to be a good mother to a baby. Infants have simple needs. They don’t disobey, and you can build the parent-child relationship just by holding them on your lap.
Older kids, on the other hand, are complicated. My daughter will be four in October, and while in many ways she is absolutely delightful, I feel like I’m starting to get a glimpse of all the potential challenges in our future.
Will I continue to love my children more and more? Will the top of my head actually fly off one of these days?
Paradoxically, I’m both terrified and thrilled that I’m going to get the chance to find out.
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