That happens sometimes

On validation and normalization

Most days I have no idea if I’m parenting properly. I’m making it up, adjusting in real time, hoping it adds up to something eventually.

Then every so often my seven year old says or does something that stops me cold. A direct reflection of my better nature. My higher self, if I’m allowed to call it that.

He mimics my worse instincts too, obviously. That’s the deal, I don’t get to pass on only the good parts. But when the good parts show up, unprompted, in his own words, the relief that floods my body is all encompassing. He is listening. He is learning. I am making a difference. Something is being encoded. It’s not all eat, sleep, and vibes over here.

They say blink and you’ll miss it, about raising kids. I’d add, snooze and the significant moments will pass by too. I have to be awake for them, and I don’t always know which moment is the one until it’s already happening.

I was tired. Bone tired, due to a combination of iron deficiency, low grade depression and two years of sleep deprivation. I felt the kind of tiredness that needed to be said out loud to my husband. So I told him and without missing a beat, my seven year old, who was somewhere in the room doing his own thing, said, “I can see you’re tired. That happens sometimes.”

I have been doing that for years. Validating his emotions, then trying to normalize them, because neither of those things happened for me growing up. My feelings weren’t validated and they sure as hell weren’t considered normal. If I was ever in crisis, if I was melting down, the whole situation got amplified. I was causing trouble. I was being negative. I was too much, my emotions too big for the adult in the room to hold.

Photo by Nsey Benajah on Unsplash

So hearing my kid hand that back to me, unprompted, undid me. I laughed first, then I burst into tears.

Some of it was grief, for the little girl who didn’t hear words like that regularly. I wonder sometimes who she might have become if she had. In the tears there was desperate hope that he can bottle the good I’ve given him and carry it with him for the rest of his life. Hope that it makes him more resilient. More capable of riding out whatever waves come for him, no matter how much force they arrive with. There was also relief, because the validating and the normalizing and getting those words out isn’t always easy. Some days it feels exhausting, trite even, especially when I’m running on empty and still reaching for the right thing to say.

All I’m doing most days is throwing ingredients in. A pinch of this, a cup of that, trying to bake a kid into a grown human, and none of us find out what worked until it comes out of the oven. That moment felt like a glimpse of the batter. A peek before the grand reveal.

I don’t always know what I’m doing, but every now and then he shows me that something is going in, and something good is coming back out.