Parenting: Where Everything's Made Up and the Points Don't Matter

Social media sites seem to make life more complicated sometimes. Not a day goes by that there's not an article posted on the danger of a certain food or something.

If you buy inorganic apples, you are basically biting into a big ball of pesticides.

If you cut up an onion, it immediately starts a downward spiral into poison.

If you drink cow milk, you are pouring yourself a cold, refreshing glass of hormones.

If you keep your cell phone in your bra, it is attracting carcinogens to your lymph nodes like a siren song.

You read these posts, put down your onion sandwich, take your phone out of your bra and think "Well, now what?"

Throw parenting advice into the mix and it's enough to make parents want to curl into a fetal position and whimper.

If you vaccinate your kids, you are deliberating injecting them with autism.

If you don't vaccinate your kids, you are standing on the front porch just hollering for polio to come on over and make itself at home.

If you let your children watch tv, their little brains will dissolve into a puddle of mush.

If you don't let your children watch tv, they will never see Leapfrog and learn their phonics because you sure as shootin' don't have the patience to sit there and teach letter sounds for 6 months. Also, you will never make dinner. Or mop the floor. Or write a blog post.

On top of all this often contradictory advice, it seems like parents, and especially moms, have some sort of amazing talent. Like it's not enough to keep small humans alive and fed, but now I've got to make quilts or take professional style photos or make ruffle pants or bake souffles.

It is all I can do to make it through the day sometimes and all this pressure to be crafty and quirky and fabulous just ends up making me feel inadequate.

In all honesty, I don't know what I'm doing almost all of the time.

For instance, did we make the right decision in taking away Noah's bink bink at such an emotionally perilous time for him? I have no idea. He's doing great now, by the way. Sleeping through the night and all. So it feels right but perhaps there is some unseen damage done to his little psyche. I imagine him lying on a therapist's couch, wailing through Puffs about the time his mom stormed into his room at 2 am and told him his binkies were gone and to stop crying and perhaps gritting her teeth and cursing those magical and terrible knobs of rubber.

Throw in parenting an adoptive child, with so many unknown psychological issues, and it is sheer terror sometimes. Tali screams and cries whenever I put sneakers on her. In a bio kid, I would chalk it up to the fact that she likes her soft leather mary janes and shrug my shoulders. But that little doubt creeps in because I don't know her past - is there some sort of sneaker trauma? Was she made to sit by herself in a room for punishment, wearing only a pair of sneakers? I don't know. She screams and cries often for no apparent reason. All my other kids threw little fits at that age but we always knew why. They were denied a toy or juice or the ability to run footloose and fancy free into oncoming traffic.

Scenario:

Tali is eating in her high chair. All of a sudden, high pitched wailing.

"What is it? Did you bite your tongue? Food too hot? What happened?"

She suddenly stops and begins eating. Scream. Eat. Eat. Scream and turn her head. Eat. Drink her bottle. Scream.

Later that day, she is looking at a picture book when she suddenly flops over and begins rolling on the floor crying.

Most of the time I don't know what sets her off and even though I intellectually know that adoptive kids often come with a range of abandonment and institutionalized behaviors (even the really young ones), it's still hard. Still exhausting.

It's difficult not knowing how this whole parenting experiment will end and hoping that despite all my mistakes and failures as a parent, it will be ok.

Yes, there are moms who kept seemingly impossible standards on their house. They do yoga to relieve stress and praise their children often with meaningful words. They make wreaths and send handwritten letters. They know which foods are GMO and how to turn a cloth napkin into a work of art.

The real truth is that no one, not even the superparents, really and truly knows what they're doing. We read books and articles, seek advice from our friends and family but for the most part, we're winging it.

Sometimes you're not the most talented mom or the best-dressed or most patient.

Sometimes you're simply good enough.

And your good enough is often...good enough.

So to all the average parents out there, even mediocre some days, I raise my glass of ice cold hormones with a generous dollop of high fructose corn syrup chocolate sauce to you.

You're good enough, you're smart enough, and gosh darn it, our kids are going to be ok.