Good Enough

So I’ve been thinking lately, how good is good enough? How much is too much? How much is not enough? What’s “just right”? Is there even such a thing as just right? How do I know when I’ve crossed any of these lines?

Parenting is a tough task. There are manuals and instruction books. There are internet articles describing personal opinions. There are some scientific studies. There are guidelines. But really, is there any one right answer?

There are books about how to get your baby to sleep. Guidelines about what and how much your kid should be eating and drinking. There are recommendations about exercise and screen time and time spent reading. There are suggestions about potty training and breast feeding and what to pack for their school lunch. There are also some pretty strong opinions about what not to feed your kids. But how do we know what’s right?

Some say there is no such thing as perfect. There is no perfect parent. I beg to differ. I say if you’re kids are happy, healthy, and educated, you are the perfect parent. Here’s how to tell what’s right for your kid. You take all of those of opinions, guidelines, suggestions, studies, and recommendations and toss them right out the window. On a busy highway. With lots of transfer trucks. Or you could drown those ideologies in the ocean. Or burn them in wood stove. Or an active volcano.

There really is no exact right. There is no one size fits all. Especially in parenting. There certainly is a wrong, of course. But perfect is whatever works for your kid. How we got our kids to sleep all night will be different from what others do. How could one book instruct us all? How we got our sons potty trained is different from how others will do it. And I’m not even going to get started on that lactation consultant who attempted to help DW in hospital.

So how much is too much? How much is not enough?

How do I know we’re perfect parents? Because we doubt ourselves nearly every step of the way. We question ourselves… What the hell are we doing wrong? We question the kids… What the hell is wrong with them?

So, how good is good enough? How much is too much? How much is not enough? What’s “just right”? Is there even such a thing as just right? How do I know when I’ve crossed any of these lines? That’s for us to decide for ourselves. We have put aside what the “experts” say because they are not experts on our kids. We are. We live with the heathens which makes us the experts on our kids. No one knows them like we do.  We have discovered “too much” and it ain’t pretty. We have found “not enough” and it’s uglier than a blobfish. We found our perfect and it works, well… perfectly.

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Did I write this just to make myself feel adequate? Most likely. Are we perfect parents? Damn straight we are.