My
3-year-old has, at best, a tenuous grasp on the purpose of laundry folding. For
all he knows, the goal very well could be this…
Or
this…
Or
maybe even this…
Of
course, to make a painfully long story short, after about 45 minutes, our end
product looked like this…
There
was a time when this inability to complete simple tasks frustrated me to no
end. Well, let’s be real, it still frustrates me, but at least now I’ve learned
to cope a little. I quickly realized that when you have small children,
focusing on task completion is the ultimate fool’s errand. Of course, accepting
this reality did not transform me overnight into a paragon of Zen-like
patience. I am a task completion junkie. I need to complete tasks like some
people need their morning coffee (well, that’s also me) or their daily
chocolate fix (ahem, well, me again) or a nightcap to wind down (finally, not
me).
Empty
a full dishwasher and neatly stack all the plates and bowls in the cabinet?
Huge adrenaline rush.
Finish
reading a book, not so much for the joy of reading, but so I can check it off
my ‘to read’ list? Yes, please.
Listen
to and delete all the new episodes in my podcast app? Don’t stop!
Delete
all the junk emails from my inbox? Oh my God, yes!
Enter
all the monthly bill amounts into my spreadsheet and shade the last cell gray
to indicate that every bill has been paid? That’s the dream!
So,
needless to say, constantly being interrupted in the middle of my task
completion often leaves me tweaking pretty hard. But when it comes to
parenting, in most cases, the only real option is to make like Elsa and just
let it go.
It
takes an hour to finish putting away a load of laundry? Let it
go.
You
try to unload the dishwasher, but you have to stop every 27 seconds because the
opening of the dishwasher door is like a Siren call for 10-month-olds? Let it
go.
Intractable
differences between you and your 3-year-old ruin your creative vision for
Mommy’s Valentine’s Day card? Let it go.
Kid
1 finally goes to bed after a colossal struggle, you’re all ready to finally
kick back and binge watch some Parks and Recreation, and 30 seconds later Kid 2
wakes up? Let it go.
You
make a room-to-room sweep to clear away the ever accumulating layer of toys
from the floor only to find that by the time you make it back to your starting
point, an FAO Schwartz show room has spilled its entire contents onto your
living room floor? Let it go.
Spend
2 hours cooking a dinner that would normally take 30 minutes because you’re
either balancing a 10 month old on your hip while somehow attempting to chop
onions or performing periodic suicide sprints across the kitchen to stop said
10 month old from devouring dog food? Let it go.
Yes,
when you get down to it, letting go is one of the most important parenting
skills that everyone has to cultivate. First you learn to let go of your
pre-kid self image; your goals, desires, and aspirations that only involved
yourself. Later, you have to let go of your kids. Let them go to school, let
them become more independent, and eventually, let them move on to live their
lives. In between, you have to let go of
your need for order and structure and just embrace the messiness.
This
isn’t to say that you can’t sometimes have it all. Like any good junkie, I
still find ways to get my fix. Some nights when both kids are simultaneously
asleep (during that precious 15 minute period of bliss), I’ll sneak away into
the kitchen, open up the dishwasher door, empty out all the clean dishes in
record time, plow through the pile of dirty dishes that has taken over the
sink, start the dishwasher back up and revel in the whirring crescendo of my
accomplishment. You definitely can’t hold me back anymore.
This post first appeared on the Huffington Post Blog:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-knott/parenting-101-learning-to-let-go_b_6689162.html
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