Monthly Archives: December 2019

You’re not my dad…

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I ponder never having brought someone “new” into my son’s life because I was afraid of navigating the conversation around, “You’re not my dad!” Truth be told, there are many reasons why I made a conscious decision to not date until my son left for college, but navigating a new man in our lives was just something I chose to avoid. I had enough on my plate.

As we have become a world beautifully filled with blended families and men and women stepping in to be an additional blessing to a child’s life, I have had many conversations with friends and colleagues about how to navigate this. Mostly I can speak to it from my experience of embracing another woman in my son’s life with his dad. I stand firm with one belief…you love my child, and you don’t have to because he is not “yours”. He deserves to be loved. So, as challenging as it may be, I am grateful for your loving him and I would never take love away from him.

That comes from the perspective of what a child needs, but what do partners need in navigating those relationships? How do we support a new partner in developing their relationship with our children and their own concern about hearing, “You’re not my dad!” It’s not easy. Depending on the circumstances and age of the child(ren), the process is different. Any partner we bring in to our family needs to be able to develop their own relationship with the kids. We need to be able to step aside, trust in the person we love enough to bring them into our kids’ lives and allow them space to work it out together…without our constant interference rooted in a need to prevent something “bad” from happening.

There are conversations as partners that we can have about how to support one another in the evolution of these relationships, and there are conversations to have together with our children. Include them in the gray area of what this all is. Allow them a voice in how to navigate it. As the biological parent, we have an innate sense of trust and connection with our children, but people coming into our lives, loving us and loving them don’t come with the same intuitive skill. What is normal, natural for us, is a learned partnership for them. If our partner is concerned about stepping on toes or trying to figure out what their role is and can be, talk about it with the kids.

“I love your mom and I love you. I am excited about being an important part of your lives. And I also know that I’m not your dad. So I want us to be able to talk about all of this if/when it gets uncomfortable. I want you to feel safe in respectfully letting me know if the way I am approaching a situation doesn’t feel right or sit right.”

There is a way to include our children in the evolution of the “plus” relationships of new people in our lives without giving them unbalanced power or unintentional opportunity to manipulate us.

I’m still not certain I did the right thing (a question I ask myself with regard to many, many decisions I made as a parent), but I made it. I also filled his life with incredible men who have loved him and guided him and supported him, and never once had to tread near the notion of threatening his dad’s place in his life. I am blessed with 3 brothers who have had my back my entire life, and picked up that mantle with my son. The husbands of my girlfriends have always seamlessly included us, and him when it mattered most. So whether or not my son witnessed me loved and respected as I should be in a partnership or having a male figure in our home, that absence was mitigated by the male role models he has had.

“Bonus” adult people in our children’s lives are a gift worth embracing.

 

Ninja Parenting

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Ninja parenting is a phrase I coined as my approach evolved to meet the needs of my son in every phase of his life. He grew up hearing me say over and over again, “I will always have more patience than you have attitude and more tools in my toolbox than you have challenges to give me.” The poor kid never had a chance against my ninja parenting expertise.

From the day I found out I was pregnant, I knew in my soul that my responsibility was to guide him throughout his life in the ways in which he needed, not the ways I wanted him to need. So I did my best to be present and really think about what he was looking for from me in every situation, every challenge, every phase of growth. When he was an infant, he needed to know he was safe. Not in a bubble to where nothing ever went wrong, safe, but that he could trust himself and trust me. He needed to “feel” safe, not just hear me say the words. I wanted him to know the world is full of hope and promise knowing full well that the reality of mistakes and hurt and the ugliness of the world would reveal itself to him in time, but if he held the belief in his heart that better things are possible, then when he faced pain or challenges, he would be able to tap into his courage and potential to overcome them.

When he learned the art of communication and began asking “Why?” every waking hour of every day, I recognized that he was looking for affirmation to be curious about the world, to question when things don’t make sense, to never be satisfied with the status quo. So even though it was at times inconvenient to have to be thoughtful and intentional in my response, I did my best to feed the hunger he had for learning and understanding and thinking for himself.

He reflects now and says I “made him” make his own decisions from the time he was eight. Actually, what I was doing was offering him safe parameters in which to have input in his own life. Have thoughts and opinions. The easy way out for both of us would have been to give him all the answers, tell him what he was supposed to do and have him follow my direction. But that doesn’t help him when I’m not around or when he got older and was in the world on his own. Of course I wasn’t going to let him have sole power over when he went to bed or whether or not he endangered his life or someone else’s, but if he thought it was a good idea to only study for a 5th grade Science test on the 15 minute drive to school, the best way for him to figure out if that was a good study habit was to give it a try.

It looks different for every child and every parent. There is no one way to be a parent. No one right answer for everyone. The only element that needs to be consistent is being present. Being awake to your child. Tapped in. When we make a conscious effort to make ALL of our decisions (even the hard ones) from a place of Love, then we are doing the best we can in every situation. It takes longer to accomplish the goal of helping our children learn how to make decisions, learn that negative actions have consequences, learn how to cope. These are the ultimate life skills we want our children to have as they evolve into adulthood. And they are skills we can’t dictate to them, they are life skills that we teach through action, inaction and interaction.

Ninja parenting….wisdom, patience and love (and a little bit of trust that it all works out in the end).