No Contest
Posted by Karen Edmisten in Family on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 6:00 AM
Recently, I babysat five kids for the weekend, temporarily upping the number of children in my house to eight. Chasing a two-year old, keeping him safe, and discovering his outstanding climbing abilities wore me out. It also reminded me that I am living in a completely different phase of life.
I remember chatting with some other moms a few years ago. As some of us complained of perpetual exhaustion, another more experienced mom with teenagers smiled cryptically. “It gets easier,” she said, “but ...”
“But what?” we asked.
“In another way, it gets harder. Parenting older kids is different. When they’re little, it’s all about physical exhaustion. But when they’re older, it’s an emotional kind of tired.”
At the time, my children were young. My toddler didn’t sleep through the night. Ever. What could be worse than that physical depletion?
“Give me emotional fatigue any day!” I told her. “At least I’ll collapse into a dead sleep and stay there at the end of the day!”
We shared a laugh, but my friend’s words stayed with me as my kids grew older. My toddler became a child who slept well and my older girls entered their teens. One day I realized I was about to inform a friend (who had very young children) of the same news I’d heard years before: “There will come a day when you’ll long for mere physical exhaustion! It’s hard, but not as demanding as the constant emotional output of facing hormones, crushes, and college prep.”
Yikes. Did my friend really need to hear that? Surely her reaction would echo mine: “Yeah, right! This baby stage is hard. At least you can reason with your offspring.”
She would be right. Tantrums are tiring. Toddlers don’t like reason. Physical exhaustion is hard. My recent adventure with a two-year-old talented in scaling heights had reconfirmed that. But the emotion that comes with raising older kids is tough, too. Who’s got it worse?
There’s no reason to duke it out. Every stage of childrearing is hard, but every one has unforeseen rewards, too. Let’s consider them.
Do you remember your baby’s first smile? Of course you do. It blotted the previous sleepless night from your memory. You knew you’d be content to snuggle in and soak up that winning smile for years. The first word your child uttered? You couldn’t wait to hear what your prodigy would come up with next. And your son’s first wobbly steps? He tumbled into your arms and burrowed even further into your swelling heart. Every milestone taught you that the sacrifices are worth the results, and the fatigue a necessary part of the process.
What about the time your teen first crumbled and cried over a heartbreak? After you talked it out, you both knew in your bones that things would never be quite the same; they’d be better somehow. Remember how you felt after that conversation about why God allows evil in the world? How did the boy who corrals frogs become the earnest young man deepening his Catholic faith? What about the day you spent hours discussing why friends sometimes have to move away, and how scary it is to grow up? Emotionally draining? Yes. Worth the drain? Every bit of it.
Parenting demands every ounce of us—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, but some of the demands are, well, even more demanding at certain ages. It’s tempting to see the grass as greener on the other side of toddlerhood or teen days. When a teen is despairing over friendship woes, study worries, or we’re facing a sea of incomprehensible financial aid forms, we might yearn to be transported back to a simple and “merely” physically tiring time of life. On the flip side, a mom of five kids under six might gaze longingly at a vehicle without carseats, or feel a twinge of jealousy when a friend says, “I just left the kids at home alone.”
But it’s not a contest in negativity: there’s no “Most Taxing Time of Life” or “Best Emotional Depletion” category in the Parent of the Year awards. Parenting is full of arduous tasks but focusing on whose fatigue is more impressive misses the point. It doesn’t matter—it’s all formidable, and it’s all worth it. We need support, not competition, and we need the reminder that for every tough time, milestone, and challenge, rewards for our hard work and dedication await us and our children. Most of all, we need the reminder that God’s grace is available to us for every age and stage.
We don’t have to compete to win this one. When we focus, with love and self-sacrifice, on getting our children to the ultimate goal of heaven, we’re all eligible for the same prize.
— Karen Edmisten is author of The Rosary: Keeping Company with Jesus and Mary. Read her blog at KarenEdmisten.Blogspot.com.
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