Good enough is good enough

This is a phrase I heard the lovely Gemma Bray use in relation to cleaning your house. It really applies to bringing up children too but when you’re in the trenches it’s very difficult to give yourself the grace you need to see this.

I certainly couldn’t do this when I had little kids. As a recently recovering perfectionist I, like most people, wanted to be the best mother I could be. That meant researching in great detail the best way to do everything before my children were born. Unfortunately they hadn’t read the manual and refused to follow how I thought things ought to be done!

When I look back on my children’s early days I am amazed by how I managed to achieve what I did and why I thought it was a good idea. My son was born in the summer before my final year at university and I went back to complete when he was tiny. My daughter was born when I was working full time and I had a blissful year of maternity leave. However, quite quickly after going back to working full time I had changed jobs and embarked on a postgraduate course.

I was on a bit of a hamster wheel and I couldn’t get off due to my exponentially growing family and responsibilities. The deep joy I found in being a mum was just amazing. I tackled the challenges of breastfeeding and making less mainstream choices like cloth nappies and baby led weaning before they were super popular.

Looking back I can see the different phases as periods of hyperfocus. I was so invested in these wee people that I managed to harness all my focus to understand the best way to do things at whatever stage they were at. It worked really well but I was sleep deprived, couldn’t keep up with the housework and I vividly remember being overwhelmed by being touched.

I thought something was incredibly wrong with me and spent a long time discussing it with my husband. Why I didn’t want a cuddle any more even though I was emotional and in need of support. It was very difficult for us both but I felt spread so thin and on the edge all the time.

Fed is best, sleep is essential

I have endless empathy for parents surviving on sleep that never feels enough. The knife edge of vigilance that prevents you from relaxing into the kind of soul nourishing deep rest that you so need and deserve. My kids were relatively good sleepers once they were asleep at night but the randomness of naps and the planning of my life around them was incredibly stressful.

My big boy is now 21, lives in his own flat, goes to university and at weekends works behind a bar. The knife edge has returned now after many years of absence and oblivion sometimes follows the click of the front door. My whole body switches off the moment I know he is home safe even though he has long moved out.

When you are a new parent there are no right answers just the wrong ones, a million ways to get it wrong and that pressure has risen with social media.

I personally found the social pressures of toddler groups etc. too much to bear and preferred to walk for miles with a pram and my dogs. This was until I was pressured into showing up for fear of stunting my children’s emotional and social growth by not lying them on a sticky play mat with the children of strangers. Trying to make small talk over cups of disgusting instant coffee and waiting for it to be over.

Going back to work was hard but trying to juggle childcare and even more times and places used to have me crying in the car with strung out children at the end of the day. I didn’t know then how much we all needed a routine and it was beyond me to create one.

The school years. Scheduling nightmare

As they got older we were juggling school, work, relationships, ever changing schedules, kit, clothes, interrupted meal times, and every day seemed like survival mode. I lived for the weekends when I could get off the treadmill and recover, rest and make beautiful memories with my treasures.

It was like that for years then as they became more independent there came a stark realisation. There’s no me left anymore. I have used it all up in exchange for getting us all to this point. My marriage was suffering, everyone seemed stressed and there seemed so little joy to be found despite my exhausting efforts. We went through some really dark times but what emerged was beautiful.

It took a teenage mental health crisis to ignite the spark of change. Forced us all to slow down and really focus on what was important. It also helped me to accept that I couldn’t do everything and seek professional support. We still feel the benefits of this now.

Teenagers, sanity and freedom

The pandemic allowed me what I craved and it’s sort of ironic that our freedom came from lockdown. Freedom from social pressures of early teenage and the anxiety over school attendance. Freedom to create our days and spend time together, going for walks and taking care of our puppies.

For the first time we had the bandwidth to really see each other and talk about how we felt. It was an unexpected gift from an awful time in the world.

As I write my children are 16 and 21. This is a new stage of living away from home for my eldest and spending long periods out of the house for my youngest, attending groups or hanging out with friends.

It crept up on me. This enforced solitude after spending so many years dripping with children (mine and other people’s). It’s bittersweet.

The Weight We Carry

There’s a particular kind of anxiety that comes with parenting – knowing you’ll inevitably be the subject of their future therapy. You see it coming and you can’t stop it. Every decision, every moment of impatience, every time you were too tired or too overwhelmed to be the parent you wanted to be, all of it will be revisited someday in someone’s counseling office.

And then there’s the triggering. Parenting brings up your own childhood in ways you never expected. Pain from your own past experiences surfaces at the strangest times – in the middle of a bedtime routine, during a teenage argument, watching them struggle with something you once struggled with. You find yourself trying desperately to make sure they don’t feel the lack you did, trying to give them what you never had, trying to be the parent you needed.

I’ve spent years healing myself in the hopes of lessening the impact on them. Working through my own late ADHD diagnosis, understanding why I was the way I was, learning to extend grace to my younger self so I could extend it to them. Some days I worry it’s too late, that the damage is done. But then I remember – it’s never too late to show up differently. It’s never too late to say “I’m sorry, I’m learning too.” They don’t need perfect. They need real.

A Love Like No Other

Despite all the exhaustion, the overwhelm, the moments of feeling like I’m failing – there is this. A purpose in life that goes beyond anything I could have imagined. These people I’ve raised, who are becoming the most awesome humans. They challenge me, they teach me, they show me every day what courage and authenticity look like.

My son, living independently at 21, building his own life with the quiet confidence we nurtured through all those years. My daughter at 16, navigating the world with a fierce authenticity that takes my breath away. They are so much more than I ever hoped they’d be, not despite my imperfect parenting, but maybe because of it. Because I eventually learned that good enough really is good enough. Because they saw me struggle and keep trying. Because they learned that being human means being flawed and that’s not only okay – it’s everything.

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The Hope of Parenting Teenagers

A few years ago, watching my daughter walk away from the car to an audition she no longer needed me to hold her hand through, with my son away at university, I was struck by how some of my hopes had changed while many stayed the same. I wrote this poem in Scots – the first time I’d ever written as I speak – because these hopes are tied to this place just as we are.

This poem was published by the Scottish Book Trust and you can [hear me read it here – LINK TO AUDIO]

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I hope they learn tae pit their dishes in the dishwasher,
Hope ah cooried thum in enough when they wir wee.
I hope they find a clan tae haud and uplift thum,
Weathering the relationship shifts o’ this stage.
I hope they learn tae budget and no spend a’ their money on weeknight Uni drinkin’
Hope they keep coming home tae talk aboot the guid stuff, and the hard stuff.
I hope they spik kindly tae theirsells wi words o’ grace and love
At their inevitable missteps.
I hope they ken their claes’ll no git clean in bathroom flair dubs,
Hope l’ve no screwed thum up too badly and that they ken I wis daein’ ma best
Even when they needed mair than ma best.
I hope they discover who they are, and who they are nae
I hope they learn dugs dinnae feed or walk theirsells,
Hope they ken I’ll ayeways pick thum up fae anyplace they dinnae feel safe
I hope they learn tae say No
And mean it.
I hope they huv enough self-preservation tae no dae anyhing truly stupit,
Hope they ken how deeply loved they are.
I hope they understaun their worth
Jist as they are.
I hope they are gled as often as they wahnt tae be, able tae deal wi’ stormy emotions,
Hope they ken how amazin’ they are.
I hope they ken how lucky I feel that they’re mine.
And I am theirs.

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What are your hopes for your children? What did you need to learn to let go of?