Mud & Mayhem

You think the hard parts of parenting are the sleep deprivation, the tantrums, the endless negotiation over socks. And those are hard. But then there are the moments — quiet ones, unexpected ones — where your kid does something or says something or you read a book together and suddenly you are not in the present moment anymore. You are somewhere in your childhood, looking at a version of yourself you hadn’t thought about in years.

And it is not always a flattering view.

We were reading a children’s book the other night. Simple enough — some bullies wouldn’t let the chicken into the treehouse. Classic conflict, easy resolution, lesson neatly wrapped up at the end. My son was fully on the side of the chicken.

I was not relating to the chicken.

And I sat there in the dim light of bedtime reading and thought — what happened? What was going on with me that put me on a path to being, for lack of a better word, kind of an asshole to some people when I was growing up? I don’t think I was a bad kid at my core. I don’t think I set out to make anyone feel small. But thinking back now with adult eyes — and more importantly, parent eyes — there are moments I am not proud of. People I could have been kinder to. Situations where I chose wrong and knew it and did it anyway.

I want to root cause analyze my own childhood to figure out where the point of no return was. I think I can probably pinpoint a couple of things. I think there were circumstances and experiences that shaped how I showed up and I was working through them in ways that were not exactly constructive. But knowing that doesn’t make those moments feel better.

What it does is make me fiercely, almost irrationally determined that my kids are going to be different.

I want them to be the ones who stick up for the kid nobody else is sticking up for. I want them to be the bigger person before they have to be told to be. I want them to move through the world without battle gear on — without that defensive posture that says everyone is coming for me so I need to get there first. It took me a genuinely long time to unlearn that. A long time to understand that not every situation requires armor. That you can walk into a room without weapons.

I don’t want them figuring that out in college.

Parenthood is a mirror in ways I did not anticipate. Not just the ways your kids reflect you back in real time — the phrases they repeat, the habits they pick up, the reactions that are unmistakably yours in a tiny body. But the deeper mirror. The one that makes you look at who you were, honestly, and ask whether you’re doing enough to make sure they don’t repeat your worst chapters.

I think the answer is you just keep trying. You read the chicken book and you sit with the discomfort and you use it. You take what you wish someone had done differently for you and you do it differently for them.

That’s the work. It’s not always pretty but it’s the most important thing on the list.

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Has parenthood ever held up a mirror to your own childhood in a way you weren’t expecting? Drop it in the comments — I think we’re all carrying more of this than we let on.