Because I know I can sometimes spend too much time mindlessly scrolling through different social media feeds, I try my best to limit how often I let myself open the different apps on my phone, especially if I’m working on something like writing or if my girls and I are about to do something together. When I do open something like Facebook, I try to keep my time to a minimum and only check on a handful of long-distance friends I like to keep up with as well as a few autistic content creators I follow. Because of these choices, Facebook made a suggestion for a potential parenting page and, surprisingly, it was a good fit and the first post I read through resonated with me because it captured how I have tried to engage with our girls since they were little and started following similar parenting blogs and pages.
The basic refrain of the multiple page photo posts was, I’m so glad you told me. In the post, there are different ages of a young woman, starting around toddler age and moving through her having her own child. Each moment captures a challenging moment for the young woman, from breaking a household item to difficulties with friends to being away from home for the first time. In each moment, the young woman’s father responds first with the words, I’m so glad you told me, and then together the two of them address whatever the circumstance requires, whether cleaning up a mess together or talking through an emotional moment or finding comfort in heartbreak or friendship upheavals.
In the final page of the photo post, the woman calls her dad, telling him she’s afraid she’s not going to be a very good mother. His response, of course, begins with, I’m so glad you told me, and then says to be a good mama, she needs only to remember what helped her when she was going through a hard time as a child. It’s no surprise that she recalls all of the times he said those words to her, acknowledging her feelings and letting her know she wasn’t alone and didn’t have to face her challenges on her own.
That pretty much sums up parenting for me.
I know my girls don’t need me to be perfect. Instead they want and need to know I see them and I hear them and I am their safe place. Even now, as teenagers, I like knowing I am still their safe space. The place they can come and spew all their fears or anxieties or anger or uncertainties. The place they can come and find comfort and know they have nothing to prove and nothing to justify. I like that they know they are welcome to share their heart and their thoughts and their emotions.
When they were younger, there were times I faltered in this approach because we live in a culture that does not accept or appreciate children being children. There is a strange expectation around children’s behaviors and any expression of upset or authentic emotion often creates tension in grown ups. Too often, we extend this idea well into the teenage years, when life is tumultuous and changes can feel overwhelming to our teens.
Perhaps our response is because we choose to take our children’s and eventually our teens’ behaviors and emotional expressions personally. And, maybe it’s because our girls are autistic, but we realized early on that behaviors are not personal. I believe the words, my child is not giving me a hard time, but my child is having a hard time to be true. So, from those early years, with this mindset, it was not difficult to parent in a way that created a safe place for our girls to express themselves and not feel embarrassed or judged for their emotions.
While neither of our girls plan to have children, I believe they have learned the art of grace and acceptance. That, combined with their natural bend toward empathy, is such a beautiful way of being in the world, especially a world that too often is focused on me, me, me, me. I love that we have been able to lay a foundation of love and acceptance. Even more, I love what that has created in each of our teenagers and the ways they choose to engage with the world around them. Truly this world is a more beautiful and better place because these two remarkable young women are in it.