I’ve pondered before about how much parenting really is a profession: It challenges you to develop new skills, to labor toward a mission, to lean into teamwork and to leverage a keen sense of emotional regulation to pull it all together. But unlike other lines of work, there is no salary. There is no room for a promotion to the cushy corner office. There are no health benefits nor snack-stocked break rooms; you rarely even get a break. There is no handbook, and no one to manage your performance. And above all, your stakeholders — the people for whom you do this work, who stand the most to gain and the most to lose by how well you do your job — often spend a significant portion of every single day seemingly trying to trip you up, to make your job harder, to drive you to want to jump out the window and run for the hills.
It makes sense that parenting is a thankless job: We’re dealing with still-forming brains and egos that are supposed to be outsized. They barely grasp the concept of saying “thank you” for being handed their cup of milk, so I wouldn’t expect them to profess gratitude for the sacrifices their moms make to put their needs first at the expense of our time, money and sanity.
Despite that, I don’t think I was quite prepared for just how encompassing and defeating the thanklessness can be — especially when it’s amplified by having three little ones. Yet, while their ungratefulness can be infuriating, humor helps us shape perspective and find the appreciation we need in the corners where we may not always be looking for it.
Losing the battles
Last week, Ashlee and I were getting ready to have babysitters over so we could head to a friend’s for a game night. In a matter of minutes, Avery came running in from the backyard yelling, “Auggie pooped in his undies!” As I tried to wrangle the potty-trained-for-#1-but-not-#2 kiddo and address that mess on the kitchen floor, Avery (whose pull-up I’d forgotten to put on after her last potty trip) walked over and said “I peed,” and then proceeded to turn around and prance away, leaving a trail of pee. Both toddlers kicked, screamed, wriggled and writhed as we tried to clean them up — like we were the ones willingly subjecting them to torture for fun! — leaving us sweaty, smelly and ready to speed away by the time we got to the car for moms’ night out.
Pottytime doesn’t hold a candle to dinnertime when it comes to feeling not only underappreciated, but sometimes downright victimized. Food on the floor, yelling across the table, genitals out; it’s a nightly battle. The other evening, we made what should be little people favorites: grilled cheese, sausage links, and smiley face fries. Jackson doused one fry in barbecue sauce and proceeded to lay dramatically across his chair, proclaiming that he just couldn’t eat this food. August ate one sausage and then deemed it to be playtime with his trucks. Avery decided she wasn’t eating at all that evening, insisting for some unknown reason that she needed to repeatedly slam the bathroom door and pout in the dark like an insolent teenager.
The aggravating attitude from Avery is nothing new. When we urge her to go potty, she just says “No” and totters away. When we tell her to clean up the toys she dumped on the floor, she just says “No” and totters away. When we tell her it’s time for bed, she just says “No” and totters away. And when we dare to turn off her show during TV time, the neighbors may think someone is being stabbed.
Kids, especially toddlers, have big, big emotions — and parents are the catalyst, the target and the absolver of those emotions. We have to duck and dodge those feelings, never with a “thank you” but always with lots of ’tude. But lest parents have a bad day? Not in the cards! Recently, I came down with a 24-hour bug — the kind where the fever hits you in minutes and the room spins when you move your eyes. As I laid on my bedroom floor unable to move, my little darlings thought that would be the best moment to play “jaguars” and catapult themselves from the bed onto my back. The feeble roar I managed to eek out would surely have netted me a year-end bonus or a promotion if I rose to such an occasion with my teammates at work. Yet with these guys, I got pokes in the eyes, hair pulled and screaming and laughing in my ear, with nary a care that I felt like I was on my deathbed. Parenting is truly the job that never stops, with the recognition that rarely starts.
Appreciation in action
Feeling appreciated can be a motivator, an incentive and inspiration to keep facing up to the hard moments. But given that parenting is a job like no other, maybe thanks doesn’t need to come from the usual places.
After our grilled cheese dinner gone awry, Jackson insisted on constructing a pop-up tent in the living room for him and August. We were both so over their antics that we told him we weren’t helping (because we just envisioned another mess) so he insisted on assembling poles and tying knots all by himself. When he was done and August readied to join him inside their new castle, he proclaimed, “Ja Ja is a good brother.” Ashlee and I immediately welled with tears and Jackson blushed, pretending not to notice the unexpected cuteness. It was similar to a moment this pair had the night before: When August again wandered away from the dining room table during dinner, Jackson ran over and whispered “Come on, Auggie. You have to eat or you won’t get your dessert!” and the little guy willingly followed his big brother back.
Those two have a typical brotherly relationship: They wrestle more than they hug and are telling on each other more than they’re playing together. But sometimes, we see glimpses of the relationship we hope they have in the future, and those moments give us the thanks we need for the work we’re putting in to make sure they value one another and themselves.
We see that payoff in moments like when August runs to Avery after she falls off her scooter and asks if he can kiss her boo-boos or when he grins and yells “I’m a big boy!” when he pulls up his own undies; when Jackson’s face lights up as he tells story after story about his “Minecraft” world, knowing he has an audience who has no idea what he’s talking about but will still pay rapt attention; and when Avery comments, “I’m so sad at you” if we have to go out (or if we turn off the TV or give her anything other than mac and cheese for dinner), illustrating the impact of our teaching them to name their feelings.
We’re watching them learn in real time how to care for one another, how to have confidence, how to process their emotions. Getting to see these lessons in action is all the thanks we really need. And I’m grateful for it.