Three times over the last few days I have written these words, “even a Super Hero can have a rough day.”
Of course I am not going to tell you who I wrote them to, but I will tell you that they are all women who I consider to be among the most awesome, the strongest and the most capable people I have ever known.
And yet they have bad days.
And more than that, they struggle with having them. They are disappointed with themselves for allowing them to happen. All the while accepting the faults of others. Living, working and struggling against the countless inequalities and biases that shape their experience as mothers, women and humans.
As parents, we need to be able to have off days. When the lunches are crappy. When we use the voice we hate. When we cancel story time to hide under a blanket and watch a movie. I’ve dropped them off at school and cried in the car because I was in such a hurry that morning, I didn’t have enough time to listen to all of them. I have woken up at night and run through the week past, focusing on all the things I didn’t do right. We need to be able to teach our children that it is possible to be great and fallible.
Good parenting is not perfect parenting. It is allowing our children to become themselves, within the parameters of safety and good judgment. Few rules and strong values. Truly loving all of them, so that one-day they can love themselves.
I have never met a good parent who didn’t worry about whether or not they were a good parent.
So to any of you Super Hero’s reading this. Who were up all night with sick kids, who put notes in their lunches, who worry about what kind of day they are having, or if you should start solids or not…it is okay to have a rough day. We all have them. Even the best of us.
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