Being a parent is tough. If you have kids of your own, you know. If you don’t have kids of your own, you still know.
In my house, we have four kids. At the moment they range from 10, 8, 8, and 1.5 years old. The eight year olds are not twins as we are a blended family.
Being a perfectionist permeates into all areas of my life, motherhood most of all.
Last night while doing 5th grade math and conducting a novel study, I was quickly reminded that I am a totally imperfect parent, despite all of my efforts. I felt that no matter how hard I tried to connect with the novel study content, I missed the marked. I for some reason could not bridge the connection between certain topics and real-world components. Fractions were also a bust. Don’t get me started on that because I’m really out of touch with math on that grade level.
So, through this all, I felt pretty inadequate last night. I saw my daughter struggle for a period of time, and when I felt she was just too tired to give it her all, we called it a night.
Upon reflection of my role in this, it took me some time to arrive on the thought that this is okay. I did okay. What’s more important from these moments is that we bonded together, problem-solved together, and muddled our way through it, all together. Life isn’t perfect. So cliche, I know, but the way that we figured it out was in fact, perfectly imperfect, and quite frankly, I’m okay with that.
Snyder Vision 
Substitute functions for fractions and reduce it to one participant left at home to play the school game, and you’ve described my evening.
Perfection is highly over-rated. Kids need to see us work through messy. That matters far more, as life is full of messy imperfection. The perseverance and the struggle– they’re where it’s at.
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What a great lesson to learn, that it’s okay to struggle, that it’s okay to give up (sometimes). There are definitely struggles I wish I’d quit earlier.
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I can definitely empathize with the end of day push. I wish homework were a thing of the past in education. It is often a cruel exercise in how not to parent at the end of the day.
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“What’s more important from these moments is that we bonded together, problem-solved together, and muddled our way through it, all together.” I cannot agree with you more. Love your reflection. Good luck!
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