There is a running joke among
veteran teachers about finding the students you taught your first year and
apologizing to all of them. We all did
our best, but we really had no idea what we were doing. Eventually we grew. Things like classroom management became
second nature. We had more strategies to
meet the struggling learners. This joke
helped me realize it’s normal to wish I had a second chance with that first
memorable group. At the very least, I hope
they are no worse of the wear.
I have been thinking of that
running joke more and more in the days leading up to my oldest daughter’s tenth
birthday. I realized that she is
perpetually that first class. She will
never reap the benefits of my confidence in parenting. Each new stage that we stumble through
together I am experiencing for the first time.
Even though I get better at parenting, I never will feel like I know
what I am doing with her.
When she was an infant, and my mom
drove off and left us after 8 days of live in help, I was convinced my child’s
ability to breathe was intricately connected to my mother’s proximity. I sat there nearing a panic attack watching
her little chest go up and down and fearing her fragileness alongside my
inadequacy. I didn’t think I had the
skills to keep this delicate thing alive – this person whose wellbeing had
become the only thing that could possibly matter in this world.
As she grew
I read her books every day and homemade all her baby food and worked like mad
to make sure the first time she tasted processed sugar was via her birthday
cake the day she turned one. When her
Parents as Teachers facilitator came to our house to make sure she was
developing appropriately she asked me how well she did with feeding herself
cookies, I felt like a failure. I had
never given her a cookie so now she lacked cookie-eating skills! What kind of repercussions might this hold
for her future?
When she
was a toddler I carefully planned her transition into her new room and big girl
bed two months before her sister was born petrified that she might view this
family transition as an assault on her relationship with us. When it was time to start dance classes I
called and toured every dance school in town to make the best choice. When we had to make the decision about which
school to send her to I sobbed and stressed overwhelmed by the power each
decision I made had in shaping her life.
I could
tell stories like this for each stage of parenting she has ushered us
into. As school age parents, I worried
about the balance between advocate and helicopter parent so I failed to speak
up for her and her learning needs. As we
entered the angsty stage I didn’t realize that leave me alone means I need you
more than ever so I took the wrong step of giving her space and hurting her
feelings. I have zero ability to help
her navigate the friendship drama of upper elementary school.
Simply put,
all the things I get better at through experience are benefits only her sisters
will reap. I will never really know what
I am doing with my oldest. While I can take
a relaxed, almost flippant, “they’ll be fine” approach to her sisters, rooted
in the belief that kids are resilient, with my oldest I have never quite shaken
the fear that plagued me as my mom drove off almost ten years ago – that fear
that I am messing up. When I snap at
her, I feel like it is often really out of frustration with myself and my
incompetence. Our oldest children are
our first chance to show the world we know what we are doing. We want them to be perfect so we can hide our
insecurity from the world, and then maybe from ourselves.
Because I
can’t change any of this, and because it is surely to only get worst as my
oldest becomes our first high school student, our first driver, our first to
apply to college... I am trying to take
comfort in the same thing I tell new teachers to take comfort in. You will never be less prepared than you are
for your very first class, but you will never care more. No class will ever reap the passion and
excitement you have for teaching like the one that made you a teacher.
Ten years
into this parenting gig I am trying to fixate as much on the right steps as the
missteps. Yes I would stare at Avery as
an infant petrified she would stop breathing; but also, I stared at her as an
infant. By baby number two there was a
toddler to potty train and two sets of children’s clothes to wash. We would sit in our clean house (though we
didn’t appreciate it as clean at the time) and just stare at this perfect
little human. During our first summer
together I would dress her in her little swimsuit and take her to the pool with
no other distractions and just splash and play feeling a contentment I never
knew was possible. When she first
learned to sing a song off the radio I forced my brother to let my precious four
year old on stage at his high school as part of his student talent show. I knew how special she was, and I committed
my life to making sure others see just how special she is as well. I love all my children, but there is a
special adoration for someone whom you get to enter each fascinating,
challenging and enamoring stage with.
Your first child brings a new love, first crush giddiness to parenting
that makes it all bearable. Though I surely owe her many apologies, I hope that
like my first set of students, she isn’t really any worse for the wear.
