What if, today, you’re not an incredible parent.
A perfect and completely selfless, all service robot, dedicated solely to the needs and whims of those around you? What if instead, you were simply 'good enough'?
“The good-enough mother” is the term coined by Donald Winnicott an English paediatrician and psychoanalyst in 1953. Yet, decades later, we're still struggling to digest and implement his wisdom.
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The crux of Winnicott’s message is that by responding to a child's every need immediately, we remove their ability to account for failure and tolerate frustration. Its arguably never been more stressful to parent. Juggling raising kids with work, life admin, keeping up with competition from social medial, while also scheduling in any self care.
Social media makes us believe we have to be at the new Ninja Warrior as soon as it opens and our children can’t be seen in the same outfit twice. The good enough parent is your permission slip to say f*** it!
When I was a kid, the summer holidays consisted of watching my dad lay flags in the back garden and my mum scrub the front step. Accompanying them to Kwik Save was a bonafide activity. So how about we just have cereal for tea tonight and watch TV under the duvet instead of battling 20 spellings?
Done is better than perfect and quiet quitting the new barometer of work life balance. We’re collectively realising it's not possible to be productive all of the time. It's exhausting trying to work harder than everyone else to climb the ladder while keeping all plates spinning. So perhaps now is the time to embrace the ‘good enough parent’ within.
The good enough position stands in contrast to the ‘perfect’ parent and recognises it's not possible to be empathic, available and immediately responsive at all times. While the perfect parent might find it difficult to tolerate their child’s feelings of discomfort, frustration or anger, and may even try to prevent their child from experiencing these difficult emotions.
It's tempting to want to respond pre-emptively to your child’s needs, but consider that you could be limiting their development as this stifles the child’s ability to express negative feelings. Children need to experience frustration and waiting, so they can grow to be an appropriately dependant and autonomous person, in their own time.
Mistakes, slip ups, bad days, heartbreaks, lack of motivation, loss of temper and uncomfortable feelings are all important things for your children to see. These are all great ingredients for social and emotional development.
Parenthood is the hardest job, and we’re all going to fail sometimes. But we dust ourselves off and try again without a second thought. And we never ever give up.
While it’s tempting to want your child to be quiet and compliant, with rock star talent, top grades and athletic skills worthy of fame and fortune - the fact that they’re alive and safe with space to express the entirety of human emotions, is enough.
That said, striving to be a perfect parent is a bit like smoking. The evidence shows its unhealthy, but the addiction is hard to quit.
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