Why I (Sometimes) Don’t Like My Kids

I’m not Mother Teresa. I never was, let’s establish that first.

But maybe you are a perfect parent? Dispensing pearls of wisdom all the perfect time? Empathizing when your kid crashes the car instead of yelling? Ever-knowing when to ask “What’s wrong?” vs. giving space? Offering lessons like a perfect trampoline waiting beneath, catching them in the perfect, non-intrusive way? Intuiting perfect phrases to reassure, support, and teach, all-in-one?

Not me. I do my best to embrace faulty parenting. And last week, reading a colleague’s book about parent-adult child relationships, I kept getting stuck at the author’s repeated mentioning of any good parents’ “unconditional love.”

Wait, what? When a child gets thrown into the drunk tank or is caught shoplifting or simply refuses to clean up their own mess (literally and figuratively), I am sorry (not sorry), I do not burst out with what looks like love. Yes, I love them, but it’s taken me several decades to learn the best response is pensive silence, or multiple “mm-hm,”s, just to buy myself time till I figure out the best (best, not perfect) parental move.

This colleague’s book was otherwise excellent, and I had an epiphany about the virtually ever-present love part. I know the author does not have kids! The book, written intentionally from an adult child’s perspective, leaves open the parents’ side of the picture. I remember that era. Decades ago, before children, thinking for sure I could do better than my parents. (They were great at many things, by the way, just not particularly conversant with emotional intelligence. I could have used some of that, just saying.)

Realizing the author doesn’t have children, I remembered how I’d felt BK (before kids). My mother often said she hoped she was a better parent than her parents had been, and hoped I’d be a better parent than she was. Easy peasy, I thought whenever she intoned this maxim. Duh.

But then… kids. The sleepless, sometimes belligerent, sometimes oppositional, sometimes infuriating, lovely, startlingly beautiful kids. After the first, I was sure I was failing motherhood. She and I had different temperaments and ways of showing and receiving love: me, physically affectionate; she, slightly touch averse. Me, diving in to get things done quickly; she, turning to avoidance.

She was a needy —they all are!—and more than I’d expected (haha, joke’s on me!). Mothering turned out to be by far the most difficult job I’d ever had. Or ever would.

I wasn’t alone. A huge part of my therapy practice involved helping mothers (fathers, too, but especially mothers) learn they were absolutely not failures. They were plenty “good enough” as parents.

I love my kids. Catchy headlines notwithstanding, I rarely hate them. But at times, I have almost. When their need for care and attention (including as adults) bumps up against and eclipses my need for, say, sleep, food, comfort, showers, work, socializing—you get the idea.

Helping parents in therapy know they are good enough, but not perfect, was ever-present in my practice. Turns out, I have lots of company in not always effusing the ideal parental love. If one side of a parental spectrum is perfect (or near-perfect) love, and the other pole is toxic abuse, most of us stand in the healthy middle, doing the best we can, being good enough.

After my first child, I had a second (actually, a third and fourth too, but they came later). This second was different than the first. That goes without saying—they are all different—but I magically felt like a better mother. I was more attuned (or rather, she was needy in ways I better understood and could give). Aha! I wasn’t a bad parent after all, it was simply an easier match with the second. Even today that’s true, when both are lovely adults.

So let’s debunk the ideal love myth, shall we? (Unless you do happen to be Mother Teresa, then please, you go!) For most of us, making it up as we go along and trying to grow and improve is as good as it gets. We strive for better understanding, for taking the child’s perspective more. We focus on accepting our kids wherever and whatever they are—not the same as agreeing, condoning, or supporting their every decision or behavior. We work on setting boundaries and limits that take care of our own needs as well as our child(ren)’s. Because our needs are valid, too.

This good enough path is different than striving for perfection, which we hopefully know better than to aim for. We needn’t pursue some epic parental ideal that has us feeling faulty when we miss the mark. Instead, good enough parenting jives with the motto “Keep trying whenever you fail.” This assumes failure, over and over, but also a unique opportunity to try, to move forward, to heal.