I know parenting is supposed to be the hardest job you will ever love, but I don’t think anyone ever said it would be this hard.

Motherhood is scarey and heartbreaking and overwhelming. And I’ve had more than enough of all three during the past three days.

Reason #1, parenthood is terrifying:

On Saturday we spent several hours at a park for a family birthday party. My five year old daughter and three year old son both spent a while on the swings being pushed by their paternal grandfather. Later in the afternoon, my daughter asked her aunt to push her on the swing again and she promised she would, but got side tracked briefly. Princess WhinesTalks-a-lot then asked me to push her on the swings and I told her to wait just a little bit longer. She had already spent a lot of time on the swings. She could wait.

Five minutes later I look over and find her being pushed on the swings by a strange man. Not only was he pushing her, but she was in a toddler/baby swing. She had to have had help to get into that swing. That means she asked the man to help her into the swing and asked him to push her.

Her father and I were not happy. After removing her from the swings, we discussed stranger danger. AGAIN. This is an ongoing issue with this child. She doesn’t know a stranger—never has. She has no inhibition. No filter between her thoughts and speech/action. It’s frightening.

After spending a sleepless night thinking about this incident on the playground, I talked with her again about strangers and posed several scenarios for her.

“What do you do if a stranger talks to you?”

“Don’t talk to them.”

“What do you do if the stranger says they have candy in their car? Do you talk to them, then? Do you go with them to their car?”

“Can I say yes?”

Sigh…

“No. You cannot. NEVER go with a stranger no matter what they say or do. What if someone says they have a puppy and ask you to come with them to see it?”

“I say no?”

“Good.”

“What if they say they have a kitten but you have to go with them to their car to see it?”

“Oh, I like kittens.” She paused to think for a moment. “I tell them no.”

Finally, I seemed to be getting through to her.

Her dad joined the discussion and we talked about every scenario we could think of, and she seemed to listen this time more than in the past. But she still frightens me. This is the child I worry the most about when it comes to things like this. Her brothers are so much more cautious of people than she is. She trusts so easily.

Reason #2, parenthood is heartbreaking:

This morning my six year old greeted us with chocolate on his face. I confronted him, thinking he ate one of the chocolate chip cookies I made last night. He said no, but I could tell he was lying.

Then I found the hershey bar wrapper. This is the secret stash of chocolate my husband keeps on hand for certain times of the month to help tame his angry beast of a wife. That would be me. Yes, I own it.

There were three chocolate bars missing. He had eaten them over the last two days.

“I haven’t had any chocolate in a long time. I needed some chocolate!” he exclaimed.

When we scolded him for sneaking food–and especially for eating candy before school, he began hitting himself. Something he has been doing more and more recently.

He spoke of feeling guilty. And when I left the room he made his dad promise not to tell me, that he said he hates himself.

This breaks my heart. It’s like watching myself all over again. We’ve tried so hard to do certain things different from the way our parents did them. And now I find that it didn’t matter. My son is doing the same things I did. Not only is he sneaking food (sweets!) but he is hitting himself, hating himself, and being hard on himself.

I used to do all of this. And the guilt? My father’s family is famous for it. Both feeling it and laying it on thick. And my boy? He has a full dose of both sides of the guilt.

I hear my husband say to my son, “Nobody is perfect. Don’t be so hard on yourself.” And it’s like hearing my father’s voice nearly thirty years ago.

I don’t want my son to suffer the way I did. I feel his frustration and anxiety and I know he has been raised differently in some ways and the same in others and I am left wondering what did I do wrong? Or is it really more genetics than anything else?

Either way, I’m determined to find something he can focus on and feel good about. I can’t watch my son go through what I did. It’s something I prayed would never happen and now I have to take matters into my own hands and make sure it does not.

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