Is It Me?

Well, is it? You see, this isn't a simple question. This question has recently become the refrain that I utter in a frustrated huff...many times a day....to any other adult within my vicinity. Usually it's my husband, but sometimes it's a friend. It feels like I've lost the ability to navigate through the waters of parenthood without checking with someone else.

Generally, this question follows an animated "discussion" with my daughter or after a "disagreement" with my son. I'll ask one of my children to do something, they will not want to, will protest loudly and I'll turn to my husband and ask: "Is it me?" Surprisingly, to me at least, the answer is never the same. Which is exactly why I keep asking.

After nearly 20 years of parenting, it seems that everything about it still astounds me. I'm shocked by my kids' disagreeing with me. I'm taken aback by their questioning of my requests and yet I'm realistic enough to know that often, I should check before I react. I lean on someone else to sort of "police" my emotions, lest I allow my mercurial estrogen levels to send me into the stratosphere over a messy bedroom, a missed curfew or unfinished school projects that are due in two days.

It's tricky, this mothering business, at least for me. There's no instruction manual and although you can look for practically everything on Google, there's no search result for dealing with "crappy teenage attitude." Trust me, I've tried. And so, armed with many choices, but few of them obvious, I wade through the often turbulent seas preparing to be blindsided by raw emotions or bold indifference, always at exactly the wrong time.

As physically exhausting as parenting was when my children were young, nothing could prepare me for the mental exhaustion that older children will cause. If I'm not angry and frustrated that they can't understand my point, or more importantly, my love, then I'm worried about them as they break toward independence. Years ago, after a co-worker was sympathizing with my lack of sleep thanks to my infant or toddler, he said: "Little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems." At the time, I had no clue what he was talking about. What could be worse than extreme sleep deprivation? How about extreme emotional roller-coaster?

Sure there are enough books about parenting to fill a decent municipal library. But I personally think that the point is that the books continue to be written because, still, to this day, nobody has all the answers. And it's because parenting is such an inexact science that I continue to ask the question, hoping, beyond reason, that someday I'll get it a little bit right.