05/24/2024
Even child development specialists need help sometimes.
With Charlie what I need right now is to have professionals on my team who can remind me of the strategies that I already know and that fit with the type of parent that I want to be.
I need everyone else who is not a dog professional to help me to feel seen and heard without giving me advice. Honestly, this is especially true if your piece of advice is that I just need to be more demanding and take charge of the situation. That’s just not how I want to show up as a parent. I can be assertive when I need to, but my goal is to reduce stress and show up with empathy and within the just right challenge. As I say, I want to create a mood worth spreading.
Even the best parents need help sometimes. Even the best parents get frustrated with their kids sometimes. Even the nicest kids get frustrated with their parents sometimes. I would venture to guess that all parents get frustrated with their children at bedtime because everyone is tired. We all need to learn how to complete stress cycles, so that stress from outside of our families does not seep into the family as much. I think that comes the easiest when we remember that wellness is an action and not a state of being (see Emily and Amelia Nagoski‘s book Burnout.)
T. Berry Brazelton used to talk about the idea that every pregnancy has three babies: the perfect, smiling and cooing baby; the challenging baby with special needs or the baby who cries all the time; and the real baby who is a beautiful mix of perfection and imperfection. And I think that’s true of us as parents too. Sometimes I’m the perfect parent who has a ton of great strategies. Sometimes I’m a hot mess and I lose my s**t and Charlie ends up shaking behind the couch. And the reality is that I’m a real parent. I am a beautiful mixture of perfection and imperfection. I am a great parent, who makes mistakes and hopefully learns from them. I get stressed out and anxious and when I cry, I get literal pain in my neck, but then I pick myself up and I complete stress cycles and I take a deep breath. I watch some comedy. I do some improv. I get on the elliptical. And I start to feel better. And that’s ok. It’s just as it should be. A beautiful mix of perfection and imperfection.
Don’t forget that you too are a beautiful mixture of imperfection and perfection, and that’s just as it should be. 
