On Parenting

Wild Roses at the Witte.

In all the inadequacies of parenting, to try is the most elemental.

All the other skills that one must learn to raise up other humans come after the trying.

If we try, the motivation behind that is innately loving and positive.

It we try, there is little chance that the thing will go horribly wrong and fail.

Putting those feet one in front of the other is all that is required to get the train to leave the station and move those tiny babies along the track of human development that we all magically believe in.

My children's father and I could be could be kind to one another. So, we did that.

We were kind.

(Side note and advice from me to you: being nice to one another will not a marriage make.)

I tried to be a firm and controlling type of trainer of humans.

My little humans, however, never were mold-able in the traditional sense.
They always required logical answers to the why questions and the explanations that took lots of words to describe.

I always did try to answer those hard questions. Still do.

But these little humans that the hospital kept allowing me to bring home just kept pushing me further and further away from the mold that I was trying to fit myself into among the fundamentalist crowd.

My Kai. My guy.

My children often reminded me of the ways that my family had fallen short in meeting my needs as a highly sensitive and gifted child.

I had longed to be understood. I had wanted questions answered and solutions found, and curiosities explored when I was younger.

I did not want to keep telling my children, “no.”

Poverty always kept us on the brink of calamity.

(Talk about additional strain on a marriage, amiright?)

When I stopped spanking the kids, I didn’t discuss that with their father. I made the decision and explained to him the reasons why I had done so.

I have found satisfaction and fulfillment in finding my own opinions and means of doing things.

I think that having genius friends in my circle helped, but I did try and find solutions to the things that irked me about whatever thought system I was navigating at the time.

Getting dirty at the San Antonio Zoo.

In Christianity, at least in the Christianity variety that I was a part of, there was little room for questions and seeking answers.

There were rote answers to all the questions and if there were no answers, then the asker was wrong for asking the question in the first place. That tiny box of rote answers was the undoing to my love affair with the fundamental's Jesus.

Knowing all of this, and the winding road to raising four kids and still being humbled and molded by them and experience, I've put down some of my current thoughts on parenting.

How to parent and raise up humans that don’t suck:

Humans do suck, however, and they will be a source of great heartbreak and disappointment if you don’t come into this parenting life with that soberly and completely understood in the first place.

Lovies at the downtown San Antonio Library.

Tiny humans do not cry to attack your person-hood.

I believe that was one of the ugliest things that I used to believe about children, babies, and toddlers.
I used to think that they were all evil sinners and that they were displaying their sin nature when they cried out from their cribs to be held and loved on.

I naively accepted as canon the lie that babies should be allowed to, “cry it out.”
I am so deeply ashamed of how I treated my baby boys when they were in cribs. I’ve apologized to them now that they are older, but that doesn’t erase those harmful years.
I sucked.

I’m now actively avoiding writing any further on this topic because I’m ashamed of my past.



Hold your babies when they cry. They have no selfish ambition. Their developing neurons need human touch and voices and movement to develop in all the correct ways. They are not attempting to sabotage your life; they are seeking connection with you so that years from now they will associate your voice with safety and security and love and warmth.

Tiny baby Adia.

Don’t.

Make.

Them.

Cry.

It.

Out.

They need you.

They need you when they whine.

They don’t have the words to use to vocalize their needs for you. You have to use your problem-solving skills to meet their unspoken needs.

They don’t have words.

They need you when they fall.

They need you when they are afraid of the dark and the hallway light isn’t enough for them to be satisfied.

They need you in the morning before you’ve had your coffee and you can’t think straight.

They need you when your depression is keeping you glued to your bed in clothes you put on three days ago.

They need you when their best friend calls them a dickhead.

They need you when they can’t reach the cups in the cabinet.

They need you when they are lonely for friends in a three-state-away place.

Tiny Bella and her buddy, Aidan, in Kansas.

They need you.

You were put on this earth to create a world of safety and love for that little person. You were put on this earth to love the shit out of those teenage turds when they break your heart with rejection.

Let them rebel. You won’t reject them.

Let them rant and rave about the latest opinion they are trying on from some mouth breather they read on reddit. Listen intently and ask probing questions about how and why they are thinking the way that they do.

Eisenhower Park trails.

They need to know that what they talk about matters to you.

That stupid game that they can’t stop playing? You need to care about that as well. You were intended to bend down and join them in their land of make-believe, even if in this modern age it is made up of pixels.

When they tell you about a video game you’ve never heard of that is consuming them from the inside out, figure out what it is that they are talking about. You can try. You can try to understand what it is that they are talking about.

When they need space, you give it to them. You don’t push past their boundaries, but rather, you make every attempt to respect and reinforce them.

You don’t make fun of them for their idiosyncrasies, but rather celebrate them.

Unschooling days

When they need a cuddle, you give it.

When they want to play with your belly fat in public, let them.

You are teaching them that the human body is good and that a little belly fat is nothing to be ashamed of.

When they want to own their bodies and do wild and crazy things with their hair, let them.

Really.

Getting started on her buzz cut.

New look for 12 year old Bella. Her hair, her choice.

Red tips and Jamin hold-me's at on of Kai's basketball games.

When you have a kid sitting in the front seat on a drive, let them choose the music you listen to. Enjoy it and criticize it together. Ask them what they like about it. Ask them why they prefer that artist over another.

When they fall in love ask them what it is that they like about the person they are interested in. DO NOT tease them about their choice. This will cause shame on their part and they will close off a part of themselves to you that will be difficult to recover.

When you talk about sex, use the proper names for body parts. There’s nothing sadder than a grown man that can’t say the word penis without cringing.

Photo shoot during Kai's bball game.

Talk about safe sex. Talk about different types of sex. Talk about the LGBTQ community and their rights to acceptance. Talk about good and healthy sex.

Talk about religion. 

Question the heaven and hell out of religion with them.

Let them know that you don’t have all the answers. Let them know what you do know and allow them to figure things out on their own as well. Look up answers to questions together.

Don’t be shocked when they have condoms.

Don’t rage at them when they screw up because they most definitely will screw up.

Don’t consider yourself an expert on them. Allow them the common courtesy of discovering for themselves who they are.

Allow them to feel. 

You allow whatever waves of emotion it is that is crashing over them at any given time to fall upon them without judgement.

If they are pissed at you, check yourself. Maybe you’ve screwed up and you owe them an apology.

Humble yourself and apologize for whatever it is you’ve done to offend them.

Become their safe place if you aren’t already.

I have no idea where this one came from.

Their interests will not always be the same as yours.

You didn’t have children to be raised up in your image, but rather, to raise them up into the people they were always meant to be.

Let them be bored. Let them be mad at you when you set up boundaries. Let them be selfish. Let them be wild. Let them be free.

Let them be annoying and vicious and goofy.

Give them the benefit of the doubt that the world never will.

Your goal is to let them go into a dark and cynical world with a safety net of love and acceptance that will always be there to love them back to health.

One of the Xmases.

Those demons in your closet? The ones that you don’t want the rest of the world to see? Let those kids see that. Let them know that you have imperfections and that you are wrestling with things that are big and overwhelming and that you don’t fully understand.

Humble yourself enough to let them see your humanity. Those little buggers are going to know that something is up without you saying anything anyways.

Let them get dirty or else let them hate being dirty and carry around wipes with you if they can’t stomach having sticky hands…ever.

Smile at them. Laugh with them over the obscene and ridiculous things they say.

Let them know that you are proud of every hard decision they make and that their perseverance is rewarded.

Bella and her lizard, Charlie.

Tell them out loud what it is that you like about them.

Talk about money and politics and social justice and race. Talk about different cultures and history and wars and kingdoms. Talk about science and literature and mechanics and nature. Talk about languages and music and prisons and crimes. Talk about food and drinks and molecules and sociopaths. Talk about socialism and bias and feminism and capitalism. Talk about astronomy and fiction, poetry and physics.

Talk about what matters to you. Let them know about that thing that you’ve been trying to understand. Ask them about what matters to them and talk about that.

Chew on what they say and bring it up again later with more insight or perspective or a new fact.
Let them see you struggle. Let them see you fail. Let them see you conquer and be rewarded and celebrated as well. If they tell you that you are beautiful or smart or strong or an asshole, hear that. Take it to heart. They live with you day in and day out and they are well-equipped to be judges of your character.

My silly girls.

Make up songs about eggs and dance like a lunatic in the kitchen. Laugh at their jokes and laugh at your own absurdity when necessary.

Jamin and I at his first concert. Thanks Tip!

If you don’t know what matters to you, find out and get passionate about that shit. Don’t just melt into being a parent now that these little people exist. You are still valuable in this messy world y’all exist in.

Be a person. Be your own person. Be a person that loves yourself and respects yourself. Be a person that you like; that you can be proud of being.

Be proud of your people. Be proud of the stupid times they are so stubborn that you want to scream.

Their stubbornness is a virtue and it will lead to a strong adult human one day.

See, a capable adult is your end goal.

So smile with those little ones, even the big ones that break your heart with their interpretation of the truth.

SAMA with my minions.

You allow them the freedom to be human and love them and love them.

...and love them.