So you think you know what it means to be a Parent?

Being a parent is more than just childcare; it is more than providing discipline, structure, love and nurturing, protection, education and behavioral modeling. You may have studied all these things. You may have read every "parenting" book on the market. You may believe you know exactly how you plan to raise your children, when you do have children.

But until you actually become a parent, you cannot fully comprehend what it is to be a parent.

Looking up "parenting" on dictionary.com, I found myself latching on to one particular idea: the adjective "parent" is defined as "being the original source." Biologically speaking, this means that if you are a child's parent, you are the "source" from which that child came. But there is so much more than biology that goes into being a parent.

Being a parent means being the First: the First to love your child as your whole world, and the First to wish he'd never been born (fleeting though those thoughts are, they can still creep in unbidden); the First to help your child, and the First to hurt his feelings; the First looked up to when he needs a role model, and the First to disappoint when he realizes you're not infallible; the First to cheer him on, and the first to criticize. You get the idea...

A child has many adult influences in his life-- teachers, grandparents, aunts and uncles, neighbors...But none of these people has as much inherent power to influence him as does his own parent. When you are a parent, you realize (either consciously or subconsciously) that every single thing you say or do to, with, or for your child, has the power to affect the rest of his life. This is the awesome responsibility and burden of being a parent. Now, you may believe that you shoulder this responsibility for a child in your life who is not your biological offspring, and if so then congratulations (or condolences)-- you can consider yourself a Parent. Otherwise, you just don't know...

It is so easy for some other adult to observe my children and think he or she has the perfect answer to how to deal with their problem behaviors. For example, it's easy enough for a well-meaning individual to suggest to me that I put my baby in a crib to "cry it out" to sleep at night, and that this will cause him to start sleeping through the night and our whole family will be able to sleep better, be livelier, etc. etc. But when I consider this option as a parent, suddenly it all becomes much more complicated. Maybe crying-it-out will help my child to sleep better-- but maybe it will also have other effects, not all positive. Maybe he will come to believe that I won't respond to him when he needs me. Maybe he will be sick one night but he won't cry to let me know. Not to suggest that parents who use this method of getting their children to sleep are bad parents, or that their children will necessarily grow up with abandonment issues. Just that for me, personally, the worry associated with this method was not worth it for me to try, so I didn't-- the consequence being (perhaps) that I now have a 3-year-old who still struggles to sleep at night (then again, my 6-year-old has always slept just fine).

But this is not a post to discuss the ups and downs of sleep training. And I will confess to not having all the answers there-- even after having my third child, I'm still figuring it out.

Parenting is not a static process. What is often referred to as a "parenting style" will constantly change and evolve over time as a person "grows" into his or her role as a parent. I am not the same person now as I was when I had my first child, and I have "parented" each of my children a little differently so far. I made mistakes with my first child, that I tried not to repeat with my second (I did some things right, too); I made a whole lot of mistakes with my second, that I vowed not to repeat with my third. Oh gosh, did I ever mess up with my second...Of all my children, he is the one I worry about most, and the one for whom I am most sensitive whenever anyone tries to "advise" me on how to parent him. Not because those people might not be right in their advice, but because I already know what I've done and am doing wrong, but they are not in my shoes and cannot understand the particular dynamic that has brought me and my son to where we are now.

With my third, I finally am getting to a point where I more or less know what I'm doing, but even there I worry about the little mistakes I've made...

Being a parent means constantly second-guessing every word and every action. It means being painfully aware of your child's misbehavior, and feeling powerless to stop it. Or finally figuring out how to fix one problem, while being immediately presented with another (sometimes as a direct result of "fixing" the first). Being a parent is learning to accept your child as his own person, and learning to let go of the need to control him because you were under the faulty assumption that you could, in fact, take full control over how your child turned out. Yet at the same time, you will always feel responsible; you will berate yourself over and over again with the belief that every bad thing your child has done is somehow a direct result of something you did (or didn't do) sometime in his early life, and you will feel a sense of accomplishment every time you witness your child doing something good.

See, I've only been a parent for six and a half years, so the above paragraph is something that even I do not have a full grasp on yet, but my realization of these things sprouts a little more every day as I watch my children grow.

Being a parent means exuding confidence as you teach, discipline, and guide your children, while inwardly cringing at your own ineptitude and wondering if you're really doing the best thing for your child.

Parenting a child means learning to understand him as an individual-- to be responsive, and to adapt your "parenting style" to his particular personality and needs. One of the mistakes I made with my second child was to assume that everything I did with my first (which for the most part worked pretty well) would work equally well with my second. This kind of assumption-- that all children are the same-- may work in a classroom or daycare setting (indeed, I assume it pretty much has to be this way, because employing thirty different methods of dscipline and care all at the same time would be impossible for one person), but it doesn't work as well in a parent-child relationship.

Of all the adults in my child's life, I believe my husband and I are the ones whom our children should be allowed to feel the most comfortable with, to be themselves (warts and all). I would rather have my child be himself with me (where I can still have some influence to gently guide him and help him to change if necessary) and employ his skills of tact and facade with others, than to put on a front of good behavior for me but secretly misbehave when I'm not around (or believe that he can't express himself in front of me because I might get mad).

So, you really think you know what it means to be a parent? Good for you. Do share. Because I'm still trying to figure it out.

Maybe we can figure it out together...