Parenting

This is the wrong person to ask anything about that subject. Sure, when daughter Elder was a baby we thought we were great parents. Then Daughter Younger came along to teach us we don't know diddly about squat. If you ran into the husband and I at the park when the kids were younger you could always find us on the bench. We were the parents in a numbed out stupor sucking back caffeine or asleep sitting upright. The husband even fell asleep at the kiddy pool once. We stood out from the other parents at the playground and we were too tired to pretend. Sometimes you can do everything right and it can still turn out wrong and we were well aware of it by that point. So we just tried as best we could, even though at times our best wasn't very good (I was a screamer for a time). And the girls turned out fine in spite it. They are lovely, honest and coming into their own. I thank God we survived those years intact.

I was reminded of those days yesterday while explaining to a running buddy about a time long ago when I joined the "Good Enough Parent" group that my best friend started ( her kid didn't sleep either). Whenever one of us read about some horrible thing a parent did ( like microwave their child's dog) we called each other up and say "We'd never do that. See, we're good enough".