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Beginner’s Mind
Mother’s Day this past weekend had me thinking back to my early years as a parent… The baby years, the toddler years, when there are mom’s groups, playdates, lots of getting to know other families. For me — and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this — it was a time when I felt like I was under a microscope. Throughout the course of an average day, you encounter numerous people — other parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, random people in the mall, etc. — who are very opinionated about topics related to raising children. And they do not hesitate to share those opinions with you. (As I was writing this, I remembered that scene from Mr. Mom with the line: “You’re Doing it Wrong.” I hadn’t thought about that in years, but I Googled it and found that it’s a meme. Of course it is; it’s a great scene.) Anyway, I constantly struggled with figuring out the right thing to do — about sleep schedules, time-outs, tantrums, etc., while everyone else seemed so sure about these things.
I’d be with one group of parents and someone would express their view, and invariably someone else would agree, and then they would share a moment when they would kind of roll of their eyes, shake their heads, and wonder out loud why anyone was ignorant enough to not understand that this view was clearly the correct one. I would often stay silent at these times and would frankly be a little envious — thinking it must be nice to be so sure about…
