Today, I am proud to share our first guest post in Our Tiny Rebellions. Thank you, Andrea Towers, for so enthusiastically understanding the assignment. You can learn more about Andrea at the bottom of the essay, and you’ll hear from me again soon. Have a great weekend! - Heather
This summer, my daughter started what will become, over the next seven-to-ten years, a financially draining but ultimately rewarding experience: summer camp. She attended at our local community center where she’s in school during the year and was excited to spend two months with her friends and teachers-turned-counselors. As her mom, I was excited she would be spending her time in a place where I knew and felt comfortable with the community and other parents — and selfishly a bit grateful that I was going to have some time alone to bond with and adjust to my newborn son, who arrived in early June.
Five weeks into camp, with seemingly nothing but good things coming from my daughter’s accounting of events (though let’s be real, who can trust a 3.5 year old?), I got a call from her head counselor. It started with “everything’s fine, but…”
Those are famous words that every parent dreads hearing. “Everything’s fine, but…” almost makes you wish you were going to hear that your child had a minor fall or contracted some cold rather than what could be coming. But that’s what came: a report about my daughter’s poor behavior. She was being difficult in group situations, not listening, refusing to rest quietly, and disturbing others. I was shocked. None of it made sense.
Why was she acting out when she’d never had a problem at school – with so many of the same kids, in the same building, and the same teachers? I couldn’t comprehend that her behavior could be viewed as so extreme it would fall out of the realm of normal three-year-old antics.
I expressed my apologies and promised to have a long serious talk family with her when she got home. We made plans to implement some tools to help her have better days going forward. And then I hung up the phone, told my husband what had happened…and cried.
My reaction was probably a combination of new parenthood, stress, and exhaustion. I felt silly for reacting that way. But when I calmed myself down thought rationally again, I realized I wasn’t crying because I was sad or mad about my daughter’s behavior. I was crying over me. Because I felt like this was my fault. Because I felt like a total failure of a mom. Because I felt like I should’ve been parenting better.
No one else’s child has these problems, my brain screamed at me. No one else’s child gets phone calls like these. Everyone else is well behaved and perfect and she’s the one with issues.
This narrative, of course, is not true. The pressures we place on ourselves as parents often come from a need to be what society has told us to be: perfect parents. But no one’s family is perfect. No one’s child is perfect. Social media is a snapshot of frozen moments in our life, the ones we choose to display to the public to show off our smiling, well-behaved, “perfect” children — and even our best girlfriends might not tell the whole truth when it comes to talking about their own kids. You don’t really know anyone’s lives except your own, but you feel like you do, because you’re looking at what everyone chooses to share with the world. (And I have absolutely been guilty of furthering the “look at my cute child only!” effect on Instagram).
In hindsight, I realized some of my daughter’s behavioral issues probably stemmed from becoming a big sister, despite the fact that she never had any problems with him at home. Some of it could also be attributed to the fact she felt comfortable enough in what we affectionally call her “home away from home” to act out the way she would in our house.
But in the moment, all I could think about was the overwhelming siren that blared out YOUR CHILD IS A PROBLEM, and YOU DID SOMETHING WRONG WHILE PARENTING HER.
As adults, we allow ourselves to have off days. We allow ourselves to have days where we’re mad or sad or ashamed of the way we’ve reacted because we’re mature enough to understand that sometimes that’s life — you’re not perfect 100% of the time.
Why can’t we give that same grace to our children who are navigating their own growth?
Maybe there’s things we can resolve to do better, like limit screen time for the cartoons she likes to watch. Maybe we should be less “silly” with her when we play a little roughly around the house, implying it’s okay to laugh about doing something wrong. We can easily make these kinds of changes in our parenting life, but there’s also no proof that any of those things were the cause for her behavior. Because she’s a three-and-a-half-year-old child who loves being around other kids, who is a confident, social butterfly with a stubborn mind of her own that we’ve joked about since the day she was born, making me labor for four hours before deciding to arrive.
At the end of the day, we – like most people I know – want our daughter to grow up and be kind, happy, and loved. And to do that, we need to gives ourselves the grace to grow, as individuals and a family.
Personally, Andrea Towers is a mom of two. Professionally, she is an entertainment journalist who currently works as an editor for TV Guide Magazine and her writing on pop culture has been featured in Entertainment Weekly, Variety, The Wrap and Marvel, among many other publications. She is the author of the non-fiction book Geek Girls Don't Cry as well as the ongoing middle grade series Gamer Girls. Find more of her work and writing at her website and in her newsletter, Another Chapter.
Are you interested in contributing to Our Tiny Rebellions? You know where to find me: averagejoelle3@gmail.com.
Also
Heather read:
The Ponytail - Hippocampus Magazine
Russell Brand Wasn’t an Anomaly - The Atlantic
Your wins
Andrea’s daughter had her first successful no-tears drop off this week. She said “No tears today, Mommy!” and let her leave. Congrats to all the moms going into this weekend with a smiling student. There’s no greater feeling.