Always with the questions

I have been a parent now for three years, one month and fourteen days.

I had talked myself into believing whilst I was pregnant with WonderBoy that, being an Early Childhood teacher would put me in reasonable stead, parenting-wise. I had fairly confident ideas about guiding and modelling positive behaviour, about feeding them good food, making the most of teachable moments (ie. counting how many duckies he's lined up together, rather than just saying, 'ooh that's nice. Quack, quack'), reading at least three books a day (thank you Mem Fox - a literary genius.), and things like making sure they're always kept warm etc.

Until recently, I felt I was able to keep to these ideas (ideals?) fairly faithfully. They were serving me, Pete and our family quite well. People both in our extended family and in the wider community would comment on WonderBoy's delightful manners and happy, engaging nature. Don't get me wrong, they still do. He's brilliant at behaving in public, which is as my Mum says, the place where you want the best behaviour.

Things are changing. Not in a bad way, of course - the arrival of Lola-Frog was a huge but positive change, as was starting Preschool. But along with this change has come a shift in understanding, relationships, behaviour and power. All my training and experience tells me to go slowly and tread carefully to ensure that precious little self-esteems don't get squashed, that everyone feels empowered in each situation and that we all learn something out of each confrontation.... no, not confrontation... discussion?

Yeah, well. It turns out this isn't The Brady Bunch here. We're flying by the seat of our brown trousers, and it doesn't seems to matter what we do, I usually end up feeling guilty for yelling or being sarcastic when I know I shouldn't. Honestly, I can see and hear myself saying these things and screaming in my head, 'What ARE you doing??'. Feeling guilty for not playing one-on-one enough. Guilty for spending too much time playing and the house is filthy. Guilty for spending too much time playing and not encouraging him to learn to play on his own. Guilty for bailing out and putting the TV on all morning... not to iron, to knit, or read.

And now that Lola-Frog is here, there's guilt about not spending the same kind of time going for walks and playing with or talking to her. She seems to placed quite conveniently in a safe place to kick and wiggle while I deal with the latest WonderBoy thing, or while I get washing sorted or something and next thing I know she's back to bed again. *sigh*

What freaks me out is that all parents are in these positions as well! No one knows the answer, and we've all been having babies since time immemorial. Is it a time thing, where the answers are always changing and so don't apply to me, just as how my answers won't apply to my children when it's their turn? Or is it an individual thing, where all our answers are totally different?

Probably both, and it's exceedingly frustrating.

Pete keeps saying to me, "We're doing our best, and it's no more than anyone can ask of us". I know this is true, and still can't help but feel lacking... inadequate. Maybe this is an evolutionary trick to keep us trying our best so we won't eat our offspring. If so, it's working. WonderBoy will wake up soon, and come to me in the family room, arms outspread and say, "Hi, Mummy!" like I haven't seen him in days, even though he was taken forcibly to bed in a monster tantrum only a couple of hours ago.

I could learn a lot from his truly unconditional love and his ability to forgive and just get on with it.Love you, WonderBoy and Lola-Frog.