Less-Than-Perfect Parents – and Children

Leanne LeCras is an Australian mom of 2 who knows – as we all do – that there are moments when parents are far from perfect. Just like their kids. Read more from Leanne on her blog.

Less than perfect parenting:

As every other parent in the world can attest, there are a lot of moments in raising your children that you wouldn’t mind having a do-over button for. I had been thinking back about times when I got really cross or frustrated when my kids were little and would not have won any “warm, fuzzy mother of the year” awards. There were also plenty of instances that the kids remember where I apparently failed motherhood and I thought I was doing okay!

Erin (our daughter) tells me about the time she gashed her leg on a stick and her cousins bandaged her up because her Aunty and I had told them not to bother us while we were having our coffee and chat! Obviously we weren’t very clear on what “bothering” covered in that instance. The scar on her leg is there to attest to that little “fail” moment. Our son tells the story about how I ‘made’ him ride his bicycle to the bus stop (to catch the school bus) when he was quite young. I remember it as him begging to ride his bike and me worrying about him getting there safely – history gets warped a little depending on who is remembering!

Less than perfect children:

Our two children were actually pretty good through their childhood and into their teens (despite the less than perfect parenting they experienced at times). There were times though where I could easily have locked them in their bedrooms for a day or two for some peace of mind. The teen years certainly brought a few of those moments to the fore and took a few years off my life in the process.

Our son, who is normally sensible and ordered and reliable, turned into a hoon driver when he got his license. He worked at a chicken processing plant in his spare time to save money to buy his first car – a red (of course) Holden Commodore (vehicle of choice for all rev-heads and a nightmare for their parents). The countless times I lay in bed listening for police sirens and the lectures we gave him all seem like water under the bridge now – but at the time we truly despaired.

Our daughter gave us a few rebellious moments here and there too – fortunately not with her car choice – she went for a little cute car with pink wheel hubs called “Muffin” but teaching her to drive wasn’t always fun – she would insist she knew what she was doing and was not great at taking advice – case in point was the first time she tried parking in our garage without me in the passenger seat (see below for the result!) I made her stand there for photographic proof at the time (less than perfect parenting I suppose!)

This photo is titled “whoops” in the family album.

Many perfect memories along the way

I can’t even begin to count the multitude of happy memories we have of our children and their growing up through childhood to being the terrific adults they are today. How do you condense all the little times when you laughed and shared moments that are remembered forever? One of the great things that time does, is dilute the not-so-perfect moments and it allows us to remember the good times. I’m really proud of how well our “kids” turned out – seeing my husband and I had no idea what we were doing most of the time, I think we must have gotten it right more times than we messed up.