First, do no harm.
Parenting, I believe, is the single most important thing I do, will ever do. I spent most of my pre-parenthood, adult life trying to repair myself so as not to inflict my parents' mistakes on my own children. Not to mention my own, authentic character failings--it seemed only fair to TRY to keep the babies out of the cycle of recurring pain and suffering.
So. ACTUAL parenting humbled me profoundly. It turns out that all the swaddling and breastfeeding in the world will not make a baby stop crying at 5:03 pm. Or 5:03 am, for that matter. Mercifully, I knew just enough to know that "every baby is different" and that my little man's weepiness was not really my fault... Which didn't always help on 2 hours' sleep. I tried not to do harm, but I was in the soup now; as my husband says, I had skin in game.
Having said that, now, here, ten years later, there are some parts of every day when I'm pretty sure I've ruined them, that my best efforts have amounted to shit. As an example, my third child, a handome little blond boy, who has a better sense of humor than most grown-ups, has had two incident reports written up on his behalf this week. It seems that he's taken to biting his peers. Yum.
Luckily, his teachers and peers are an understanding lot, and, truly, at three years of age, biting is not the social faux-pas that it is at say...40 years of age...BUT... Not such a happy after-school report. A muzzle?
To me, it is a reminder that no matter how often I say, "Gentle, gentle. Use your words," Luke might chomp his peers anyway. And while there are many times I say "the right" things to my children in an effort to civilize them, there are many more times that I raise my voice to them, saying grandly inappropriate things like, "STOP DOING THAT! WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU? DAMMIT, I SAID 'QUIT IT'!!!"
My point is this: no matter how good my intentions, I am going to screw up my parenting daily. The result? A whole NEW flavor of addled family life, with the goal of spilling no blood before sundown.
Now. If you see Luke today, give him some space... :-D
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