Learning Takes Time
The other day I talked to a woman who said that she had been abused and neglected by her father, abandoned by her mother at a young age, then abused by her stepmother.
Her childhood was a nightmare that, before our conversation, she believed to be “fairly normal.” She wanted to leave her marriage, and she was constantly distressed at the behaviors of her children, which she knew she was responsible for to some extent.
I gave her several courses of action she could take immediately to begin the process of healing and learning to be a wife and parent. She protested, “But I’m hurting my children right now, probably all day. In a nutshell, What can I do right now?
For those not familiar with English idioms, “in a nutshell” means “in a very short and quick summary.” I said, “My ‘nutshell’ answer is, ‘Nothing.’ There is no nutshell answer for how to completely change your life.
"There are answers for BEGINNING the process, however, and we need to be focusing on those steps. But in the short term that’s all you can do.
There is No Magical Solution, Only Learning
"There is no magical solution, which means that for a while you’ll continue to hurt your children and cause conflicts with your husband. You have to be willing to live with that, buoyed by the understanding that you ARE at least beginning to learn truths and feelings that will change everything.”
She wasn’t especially fond of that answer, so I referenced her husband, who was sitting next to her on the video call. I said to him, “John, you’re a computer programmer. In a nutshell can you tell me right now how to write my first complicated program that will communicate flawlessly with the other programs on my computer?”
He looked puzzled and amused, and I said, “Exactly, there is no ‘nutshell’ answer to learning advanced computer programming in three minutes.
But with parenting we think that somehow there IS a magical solution.
Why? Two reasons, at least:
- We really don’t want to keep hurting our children, so we want a solution that will benefit them immediately; and
- Everybody else SEEMS to be raising their children, so why shouldn’t we be able to? Well, you have NO idea how well other people are parenting—almost universally not well—and there still isn’t a shortcut.
To be sure, we do need to begin learning right now. Our children are getting more wounded and difficult to reach by the day, and we really do want to genuinely love them.
So, begin with the Parenting Training, use the conference calls, use the Ridiculously Effective Parents Facebook group, and more.
Just keep moving, and you’ll be surprised one day to discover how much more loving and confident you are as a parent.
