The Perfect Parent

I read a lot of parenting books. After eight years of this, I should have mastered parenting. I should be the perfect parent, for all the advice and child psychology that I absorb on a monthly basis. Alas. I am not. I wonder, though. What would the children of perfect parents be like? Would they be perfect?

Perfectly behaved?

Perfectly content?

Perfectly adjusted?

Or perfectly insane?

I think about the middle aged actress who tries desperately to look like she did at the age of twenty five. While the miracle of modern plastic surgery allows her to be technically perfect (petite figure with ample bosoms, no wrinkles, no grey hair, etc.) the end result is more odd than beautiful. She becomes a kit of perfect parts that do not actually add up - like that Johnny Cash song about the Cadillac. The problem for that actress is that what she desires and what the world expects of her is not possible. She can sort of look younger, but she will never be younger. The harder she tries – more plastic surgery, more severe diets – the less real she will look. You just cannot impose “perfection” on nature.

That is because nature is already perfect – just not by our unnatural standards.

It is the same with parenting. We are tempted to impose our unnatural perfection on our children. Just like that actress looks odd; our kids can become a collection of perfections: Great at sports, good in school, gifted musicians. All the while, they lack wholeness, identity and comfort in their own skins. This is not who they really are, just who we want them to be.

As parents, we have to help our children come into their own. That is hard to do when the world tells us every day what they should look like, what they should eat, how they should perform and what they should play with (and how they should play with it).  When our kids do not measure up to these standards, we feel like something is wrong. We buy books, CD’s and attend lectures to learn how to help our kids do better in school, sports, business and religion. I, myself, am a part of this trend (see my first sentence above). What if my child never reaches her full potential because I do not give her every opportunity under the sun? It can be a downward (or is it upward) spiral. The more I do to help her achieve, the more I feel I need to do. There is no good enough - only better next time.

I have to take a step back and remind myself that my daughter, while not always prefect by the world’s standards, is fine the way she is. When I give her space to do her own thing, I am treated to her wonderful imagination and fun personality. Yeah, the rest of the world may not find her sense of humor funny and may think that her fashion sense is way off base. She may never be a gifted athlete or score a perfect 1600 on the SAT’s. I can live with all of that. I would rather her have strong friendships and be content with who she is. The rest will fall into place.

I am not the perfect parent. That is just the way it is. I don’t need a hundred parenting books to tell me that (and I have read at least that many). What I am is a mother who loves her daughter with every fiber of her being. I hope that is enough and I somehow think that it will be. Will my daughter be perfect? It depends on who you ask. In my mind she already is, in her own way.