Throughout our lives we are faced with emotions that result from parenting choices, good and bad.
Whether you were the parent or the child, the choices were healthy or poor, the emotions good or bad, your life was impacted.
Very few people in life have childhoods with no defining moments.
My own childhood was amazing, more so with the hind-sighted tint of rose-colored glasses, and many of my parents' choices (active in church, strong work ethic, compassion toward others) instilled strong character qualities in me at an early age.
But they made mistakes as well.
The mistakes affected me as well, though on a much smaller scale. Proportionately I'd estimate that the result of my parents' parenting was 10% negative choices and 90% positive ones.
My mother would probably flip the percentages because, as women, we have an extra x chromosome which harbors an inane amount of the guilt gene.
Most children will eventually come to terms with the effects of poor parenting in their lives. At some point, you must accept responsibility for your own life choices.
We met a guy on the streets. Raised in a string of foster homes, he'd seen unimaginable things by the time he was fifteen. Twenty-five years later he still blames his parents for the mess he is in and drinks every day to escape the pain of a tormented youth.
About a year after we met him, we discovered he had a twin brother.
"Yeah, he's spent his whole life in a bottle, complaining about unfair life is," Twin declared when we met by accident one day.
Same childhood, same circumstances, same upbringing.
Different results.
Twin had also struggled with alcoholism at an early age, but decided that he wanted a better life than the one he'd grown up in.
It is not always easy but you can move past the buried hurts of childhood. It is a decision that only you can make, and committing it to God brings immeasurable peace.
But what about when you are the parent?
I had one of those rare, heart--to-hearts with one of my adult children a few days ago and the subject of her childhood came up. My guilt over their upbringing is astounding and something I have to continually bring to the cross.
My percentages would be more like 50/50.
I'd arrange the entire Little League's Closing Ceremonies and Trophy Presentation one week and be on a suicide watch in the local psychiatric ward the following week. (No relation between the two!)
I was unstable, not yet having comes to terms with childhood abuse and the addictions that followed.
I loved my kids dearly, but I was a mess.
And they suffered.
Throughout this conversation, my also-pragmatic daughter was speaking matter-of-factly. There was no condemnation, no passive-aggressive guilt.
I even tried to apologize at one point but was quickly brushed off.
This child took ownership of her life at six; she wasn't about to give me responsibility for any of it now.
Nonetheless I felt it.
I have a collage of vacation and everyday photos of my four kids next to my bed. I look at it every night. While these were happy memories, I inevitably feel sad. What I see is not the beach, the zoo, and their great-grandmother's house but the kids I blew off for a quick high, railed at in unjustified anger, and sent to relatives when I needed a break.
They had a roller coaster childhood.
And now, my daughter was telling me that one of her siblings has a significant amount of time she can't remember.
My child has blocked out part of her childhood.
It was THAT traumatic.
I felt as if I'd been punched in the gut.
I'd always said that if I could go back and change one thing in my life, it would be the way I handled her.
She was a difficult child and, despite multiple readings of THE STRONG-WILLED CHILD by James Dobson, I had no idea how to handle her.
So I made a lot of mistakes.
And I feel like I broke her.
Our relationship has since mended, but I know that she is still broken inside. I don't think I knew just how much until this conversation.
I can't fix it.
I want to. I'd give anything to. I'd relive every rape, every attack, every harm done to me if I could just go back and change the moment I hurt my daughter so deeply.
But I can't.
Sadly, she isn't the only one still suffering under the mistakes I made.
I see the life choices they are making and can almost definitively tie the mistakes to an area I failed them in. It is heartbreaking and I want so desperately to make things okay.
I think parenting guilt is as debilitating as any disease known to man.
Yet to allow ourselves to wallow in the guilt only models yet another parenting mistake.
No, it's time now to show them that as responsible adults we take responsibility for our mistakes but we don't let them define us. We cannot change the past.
I can hold their hands and help them through a journey of healing even though I know that I'm partly to blame for the injury.
Or, if they prefer, I can watch and pray from afar.
I am sorry and I have told them that. True remorse comes only from changed behavior and they've seen that too.
It's all I can do.
I wouldn't want my mom to spend her life in distress over mistakes she made with me.
I don't want my kids to spend their lives in distress over mistakes they'll make with their own kids.
So I absolutely cannot live my life in bondage to my own parenting fails.
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