My New Parenting Mantra

This is an actual shot of Tigerlily leaping on top of me;

as in, I was lying on the grass and she took a flying leap

and body-slammed me. This is her in mid-air above me. 

Hence the crazed smile...

 

I have always been a big fan of the mantra "This too shall pass" which was handed to me as a new mother and which has proved remarkably therapeutic, especially around three a.m. when one has been woken for the fourth time that night.

At risk of bringing the tone of Tiger's blog down, I have recently happened to read, by sheer happenstance, three different accounts of mothers whose children died suddenly. In each case, the mother lamented the missed opportunities with their children; expressed many and various regrets, and decried their previous focus on superficial matters (tidy hair, tidy bedrooms, matching socks etc). The similarities between these three different accounts got me thinking about the way in which I mother Tiger and what I might regret (given she rarely has tidy hair, a tidy bedroom or matching socks). I would definitely regret the snappy, bad-tempered me with whom Tigerlily so often has to spend her time.

One of the positive things that emerged out of my reading was a new mantra of my very own. Already it has been wonderfully effective in my day-to-day dealings with Tiger. It is, in short:

"Does it really matter?"

Today I really wanted to clean the house (which is a nightmare of unwashed dishes and mess everywhere) and Tiger really wanted to go to the park with the dog to do some hooping. I looked at the mess, thought 'does it really matter??' and headed to the park:

 I love these two photos of my newly hoop-proficient

daughter!

One of the things that I do very rarely is to join Tigerlily in a tea party. Like so many parents, no matter how much I love my daughter, the mind-crunching pain of a pretend tea party is simply too much for me to bear. Oddly, it is also one of the things that all of the aforementioned blogs mentioned regretting after their children were gone so, today, I made time to sit and do just that...for a good fifteen minutes. Clearly Tiger was not satisfied and I found her a little while later trying to force the dog into drinking tea:

At first I thought she was going to succeed...

...but it turns out Oscar is about as keen on tea parties

as I.