Why you are the answer to "What's your problem?" And why that's OK

I went to the lecture, "The Gift of Being a Flawed Parent: Using our Mistakes, Fears and Doubts to Raise Children with Heart, Guts and Purpose," at the La Leche League conference tonight, given by Lu Hanessian. To a great extent it was a (very effective) teaser for her books, because it really just skimmed the surface. But it skimmed issues that I really need to think about.

I never knew what a mass of fears and anxieties would surface when I had a kid. Worries about his life, his safety, the impact of my choices, the impact of my emotions. It's hard enough for me to deal with my mistakes, much less when they impact the whole future life of my child. But as trite as it sounds, it was really helpful to hear that it's OK to be flawed. And not just OK, but a good thing--that by acknowledging and befriending the flaws instead of denying them or fearing them, that they are gifts because we can use them to help us improve our parenting. I'm still not quite sure how to do that, especially when I'm in the middle of an emotional situation, and that's where I wish she'd gone more in depth. But hopefully it will bounce around in my head and gather some good ideas as time goes on.

The lecture mostly dealt with stuff that I think will emerge later on than things I'm experiencing now, but I think these four things will stick with me:

1. We need to know and befriend our hot buttons. Whatever it is that makes us mad tells us much more about ourselves than our child. She showed a chart saying (for whatever it's worth) that if we have an issue with our kids' tantrums, then we probably have an issue with anger. If our issue with kids is whining, then our issue is neediness. If "No!" then powerlessness, if crying, then vulnerability. Etc. Charts are inherently oversimplistic. But I think the question is important---why does our hot button bother us? What does it say about us, our experiences, our brokenness, our past relationships? And what do we need to do about that? It's probably more something we need to resolve in ourselves, than something we need to fix in our kid.

2. It's not the goodness of our relationship with our kid that is important, it's the ability to repair the breaks that defines the security and love our child will feel. This implies that those breaks are in fact gifts and opportunities, not horrible irremediable mistakes.

3. The general reminder when something is really upsetting to step back and ask what is really going on, in ourselves, and in the other person. It's usually something other than the surface issue.

4. Empathy starts with us. We have to accept ourselves and our emotions before we can move to the other person and their emotions. This dovetails with an article on developing empathy in our kids that I read recently, saying that we can teach empathy by starting with how our kid is feeling (Johnny made you really angry, or grabbing the cat's tail was fun, wasn't it?) and then moving to the other person (but it really hurt him when you bit him, or it hurt the cat when you grabbed her).

Now to request more books from the library that I won't find time to read till they're almost due.....