Maybe My Job Isn't to Make Him Perfect

It’s been a while since I’ve opened up on my personal blog here. It’s been strange because I love being authentic. I have no problem being vulnerable. I’m a firm believer that sharing my hardships + insecurities can help other people feel less alone.

+ yet multiple times during the week I’ll think to myself, “What can I sit down + write about today?” + I’m left completely blank. + also with a lack of time if I’m being honest.

Not because there aren’t things going on in my life that I’m ashamed of or because NOTHING is going on in my life, but because I’ve fallen into the trap of thinking, “What I have to say + share personally doesn’t actually matter.”

Well that’s a damn freakin lie.

So here I am, criss-cross applesauce at my desk, committed to talking about SOMETHING just to get this blog up + running again. + I think that something is going to be my insecurity around bringing Hawthorne to speech therapy.

Now before I begin, I KNOW there will be parents reading this thinking, “OH MY GAWD, that is SO insignificant. Why did she even give it a second thought?”

I know. I KNOW. + I’ve come to peace with it. So hold your frustration for now lmao. Because hey, maybe there’s another first-time parent reading this who is feeling the exact same way.

At this point in my life, I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m a perfectionist in all areas of my life. Yes, I’m hard on myself. Yes, I have high expectations of others. But having a child, specifically a VERY physically active son, has taught me to release a lot of that perfectionism because JEEZE, if I lost it every time the paint ended up on the dining room table instead of the paper or a toy got left outside, I’d have no time left to actually parent.

But I used to be a perfectionist + I used to be WAY harder on myself than I am now.

I grew up hitting all of my milestones perfectly. After all, I’m the PERFECT only child lmao, which comes with a lot of stress because there’s this underlying pressure to be perfect when your parents only get one shot. I was very well-behaved in school. School was LIT-TRALLY made for my type of brain + vice versa. I had no learning struggles to speak of, except I hate math, but I can get through it. I loved standardized tests. I always aimed high. I had this intrinsic desire to join clubs, apply for leadership positions, seek out college jobs + volunteer opportunities that would serve others AND look good on a resume.

So in retrospect, of course I carried that into my expectations for my child. Subconsciously, of course.

For a while, Hawthorne WAS hitting his milestones well. He was walking, talking, making connections, taking apart + putting back together toys, identifying colors + shapes, naming things he saw on walks, + learning animal noises. His imagination was growing quickly. His toys had conversations with each other, complete with conflicts. His pediatrician was amazed at how well + how quickly he picked up on how to use a relatively complex toy.

But...

He was still babbling at three years old.

Not constantly. He’d give us three- or four-word sentences. We understood what he said, + he clearly had a desire to communicate. He was around us talking to him + talking to other people. He had other friends his age. But mixed into those sentences was just... nonsensical jargon that made absolutely no sense, especially when he got excited.

We thought he would grow out of it.

But months went on, + it started to impact the way we communicated. I know I’m not supposed to compare, but our friends’ kids who were younger than Hawthorne were communicating in full sentences about their feelings, their favorite things, + how they wanted to spend their days.

This set off some alarms, but they’re girls. Hawthorne was walking and running + jumping before them. Girls usually start talking first. That’s fine.

Then I posted a story about Hawthorne waking up in the middle of the night crying + screaming, running into our room and saying things like, “It’s scary!” and “Monster!”

I asked my community, “What do I do?? How do I get him to sleep peacefully? How do I help him learn to self-soothe? How do I make sure he knows that he is safe?”

SO MANY MOMS of kids his age said, “Just ask him.”

And that’s when I realized maybe something was actually amiss.

I couldn’t “just ask him.”

I’d say, “What happened?”

“What was scary?”

“Why did you wake up?”

“What did you see?”

All he could come up with was, “It’s scary!” or “Scary monster.”

Maybe at this age he should be able to explain a little more???

Luckily, we have a friend who is an SLP +, yes... he needed some help.

I didn’t wait. I did my due diligence. He began, + still does, seeing an SLP locally to work on his language.

But for those first few weeks, I felt AWFUL.

I failed him.

Why isn’t he speaking like his friends? Is he having trouble making friends because they don’t understand him? What am I missing out on that he’s just unable to communicate with me? What did I do wrong? Have I not been speaking enough? Has he not been spending enough time around kids? What could I have done more?!

+ because I deeply value my community of moms + their wisdom, I reached out to MULTIPLE women + asked if any of their children had ever been diagnosed with some type of delay. Of ANY kind. I wanted to know how they navigated it, both as a person + as a parent.

What my friend Abbie said basically fixed me.

I can’t give you the exact quote because I wish I had written it down, but it was something along the lines of, “Our job is not to shape our kids. Our job is to guide them + love them + support them.”

Ahhhh.

Sweet relief.

Because suddenly I realized something that, honestly, feels so obvious now.

The challenges he has as a child, whether it’s a VERY SIMPLE speech delay or, as he gets older, bullying, not mastering a concept, struggling to make friends, getting his heart broken, or any of the million little bumps in the road that come with being a human being, are not my responsibility to prevent.

They are challenges that my child was meant to encounter.

Challenges that will teach him resilience, more about himself + the world around him, shape him into who he is meant to be in this world.

I believe he came here with all of these things mapped out already.

He was going to have a speech delay regardless of all the work I did or didn’t do.

My job isn’t necessarily to DO MORE or to beat myself up over what I could have done sooner.

My job is to take this precious child who has encountered something difficult + give him the support he needs.

+ in the future, my job isn’t to run to the playground + immediately stop an interaction between him + another kid that isn’t going well.

My job isn’t to call up the girlfriend, boyfriend, or person who broke his heart + demand WHY.

My job is to be there.

To hold space for his feelings, validate him, remind him that he is whole. To teach him what he can do differently when he encounters a similar situation, show him how this experience can help him grow, help him develop empathy for others +, perhaps most importantly, empathy for himself.

His speech delay isn’t necessarily my fault.

Or his.

This is just our first experience with a bump in the road.

My only job is to give him the support he needs to help him catch up.

+ while he’s making progress with communicating longer sentences + expressing his feelings + thoughts, I’m making progress too.

I’m learning that my job as a parent isn’t to make the perfect child.

It’s to foster + facilitate a space of love + safety for him to bloom into the child he is meant to be.

The child he was divinely designed to be long before he was ever in my womb.

Perhaps that’s one of the hardest parts of parenting: accepting that our children are going to experience things we cannot prevent, fix, or control.

We can’t make their lives perfect or guarantee they’ll never struggle or remove every obstacle from their path.

But we CAN make sure they know that when they encounter those obstacles, they don’t have to face them alone.

Actually, I think that’s the whole damn job.

p.s. I had a lisp growing up and my parents didn’t take me to speech therapy because they thought it was cute and then in elementary school I started getting made fun of for it and it took years for me to teach myself how to get rid of it so… At least I’m making generational progress.