Parents can be quitters, too
Sometimes it doesn't work out the way you thought
Welcome to another post of Mindful Mom in the Mud. A newsletter focused on navigating the mess of parenthood with humor, compassion and common sense. Enjoy with a hot beverage…or a reheated hot beverage.
You can check out the archive here for a variety of posts on mindfulness, navigating parenting advice, neurodiversity and more.
Time for some imagination.
“Research” is released that declares that surrounding children with the color red will support character traits like persistence. So experts encourage parents to include the color red in their family lives—red clothing, red furniture, books about the color red and red foods. Then, new “research” is released that the color yellow supports different character traits like generosity. Next, two different parenting philosophies emerge. Books are written and experts/gurus emerge. Parents face a fork in the road--red or yellow?
A parent decides to embrace the color red. However, they soon discover that their child is red-green colorblind and then their child proudly declares that blue, is in fact, their favorite color.
This “research” is absolute baloney. Please do not paint your house red or yellow, unless it truly delights you. This over-simplification of selecting a parenting approach is meant to demonstrate a common parental experience. Sometimes things don’t work the way we expect. As discussed in last week’s post on parenting identities, choices in parenthood can feel a lot like… us. And when we need to pivot, that can be complicated.
Sometimes it’s just not….working?
That is one complicated statement. In the parenting realm, this is declared with incredible frequency. It is helpful to consider what “not working” might mean. Not working can represent different things for different families.
Something “might be not working” as in:
your toddler’s body becomes 700 lbs and as inflexible as a steel rod when it’s car seat time (as compared to when they become 700 Ibs and the consistency of Jell-O in a crosswalk. How children transform their molecular composition is nothing short of miraculous)
the same challenge arises daily
your kid is not able to meet an agreed upon expectation repeatedly
the parent(s) are stressed frequently at home
an approach or practice is infeasible for a family in the current chapter of life
your kid hates the team or activity they have committed to
One can see there are a lot of different “not working-s” that get folded into this vague statement. The downside of using phrases like working/not working, is that it implies that there is something that “works”. Which isn’t always true. It may be about getting (re)oriented to intention, values and purpose. And sometimes quitting can help with that.
Can you quit?
Putting the words quitting and parenting together is probably making some readers nervous. It’s not quitting being a parent or quitting on our kids. But we might need to let go of certain approaches, expectations, beliefs and so on. The parenting approach you diligently researched might not be compatible with the needs of your child. Your kid might not be an NFL star or a concert pianist. You might not be cut out for the role of crafty parent like you thought you would be. Everything might be very different than expected.
In
‘s book, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away, she highlights how often we humans have difficulty quitting. No one likes to be a “quitter” but it turns out being adept at quitting is actually a helpful skill in life:“Success does not lie in sticking to things. It lies in picking the right thing to stick to and quitting the rest.”
Duke explains that people often don’t quit early enough. Decision making in real life involves not knowing all the information (doesn’t that feel accurate in parenting). Quitting is a tool that you have at your disposal when new information becomes available after you made a decision (i.e. your child is colorblind). Quitting is an ending but it’s also a beginning, as Duke summarizes in her book:
“Having the option to quit helps you to explore more, learn more, and ultimately find the right things to stick with.”
Why is it hard to quit?
There are certain parenting choices that are probably easy to move away from—maybe toddler soccer was a bust, a certain clothing styles have been rejected or your kid is just not going to eat chicken. Perhaps none of these felt super important and everyone moves on. But there are other choices that don’t feel so easy to move away from. As Duke discusses in her book, one reason is something called the endowment effect. The endowment effect is when we value something we own more than an item we do not own. This was originally described as related to loss aversion with physical items but it turns out we can become endowed to other things…like our beliefs, ideas and decisions. Duke describes:
“As we carry around beliefs and ideas, they become our possessions. We own what we’ve bought and what we’ve thought.
When we commit to a course of action, it means that, in some sense, we now own that decision.”
Another reason we have trouble moving away is the sunk cost fallacy/effect. This cognitive illusion is when people tend to continue to commit to something because they have already “sunk” resources into it and it feels like those resources will be wasted if we quit.
Think about how much parenting decisions cost. Parents invest money, time, energy and social capital. It’s easy to see how the endowment effect and sunk cost can get in the way of moving forward in a new direction. It can be helpful to hold things lightly and one way to do that is to have an experiment mindset.
This is an experiment
The idea that you are trialing or experimenting can allow you more room to evaluate how a decision is serving you. Being flexible going into any practice, approach or commitment can give you an out in the future. It’s fair to give something a good try still but determine at the start, how long you plan to try it. Also, establish what criteria will be helpful to determine whether it’s a good fit. And depending on what it is you can involve your child. This can be a helpful model for decision making as they get older.
There is plenty of space for disappointment
Sometimes it doesn’t “work” the way we thought it would. And there are feelings that go along with that and that’s okay. Self-compassion is a helpful skill to employ here. It’s easy to get hard on ourselves for the choices we made or be disappointed that something didn’t work out. Let the uncomfortable feelings have their space, be kind to yourself and your kid(s). When you are ready you can reflect and collect data on why it wasn’t the right fit, which can help future decisions.
More words on changing course…
Welcome to Holland by Emily Perl Kingsley paints the picture of what it is like to raise a child with a disability.
“When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
There is a lot pivoting required in parenting and it’s exhausting. You can check out this piece I wrote here.
“We are constantly moving with all these adjustments and pivoting albeit sometimes clumsily and sometimes with grace. If what Albert Einstein says is true—" The measure of intelligence is the ability to change” then parents are destined to be geniuses.”
Have been a quitter in your parenthood? Any words of wisdom? Leave a comment.
Ugh the sunk cost fallacy is my Achilles' heel. I feel like I'm gambling... surely one more time will be the one that lands? The one where I strike gold? And then I'm reminded of this quote: "'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results." Basically, I'm an insane gambler who has no idea what I'm doing 🙃 My kid is soooo lucky 😂