Parental Illusions...

I was so relieved to see a post on facebook this week which read "Lets see... I have two kids in time out, a dog in time out, and a baby that won't stop crying. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood."
Why would this bring me relief you ask? Well, for one, the post wasn't mine and two- the post was by someone who I always think has everything "together" and doesn't experience some of the issues I have in parenting.
I think as parents we often try to hide our imperfections. We create an illusion. We don't speak of the back talk our teenager just gave us or the poor grade on our child's math test or the "beautiful" artwork on the floor and walls that your toddler made using the contents of their diaper. Heaven forbid we actually admit that our kids behavior... and perhaps our parenting skills are not how we want them to be. So instead we work hard to keep up the illusion that our little life is absolutely perfect all while secretly beating ourselves up because we know the truth.
We look at other people and compare (even though we know we shouldn't) our parenting skills or our kids behavior. We look across the aisle at the grocery store and wonder 'why can't my kids behave like that' or we sit at a restaurant and watch other kids and say "Wow, they are really clean" or we see the well-behaved child in line at the check out stand who isn't grabbing at things and crying for something and we start wondering if we are doing something wrong. We wonder what we aren't doing that those parent's obviously are doing.
Well, the truth is, we are just seeing those "well-behaved" kids at their good moments. All kids have times of acting up or misbehaving. Unfortunately, we are all too worried about keeping up our illusion that we just don't talk about those times. I think this needs to change. I want to see more facebook posts like the one this week. It makes us all realize we aren't alone and we are certainly not "bad" parents. We are all experiencing, or have experienced, the same things. Why do we hide the bad moments when we should talk about them? We need to stick together as parents and offer up support for each other. We need to look for the mom that may be on the verge of tears and tell her its okay. We need to see the parent who looks like they have been through the ringer and let them know that is a normal thing in parenting. We need to let people know we are human and better yet, our kids are human. The only way to do this is to speak up. Stop creating the illusion. Let people see us for what we really are... good parent's who are simply trying to do the best we can for our kids.
So let's make a commitment to each other as parents to share the good stories as well as the bad. To learn from each other, grow with each other, laugh and sympathize with each other and most importantly, realize from each other that maybe we aren't doing so badly after all.
 I want to thank the mom (who made her post on facebook) for making me feel a little more "normal" and for allowing me to hold my head a little higher today as a mother.