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You are human. You screw up. We both know this, it’s no secret. (Was it? Whoops, sorry I blew your cover!)
I'm also human. I screw up too—a lot, as it turns out. I try to tell myself it’s okay, and sometimes it actually is. When it isn’t, I try to be kind to myself.
That, though, is a work in progress.
What I’m trying to say here, is that there are huge cracks in the sidewalks and roadways of life. You know, the ones that our unsuspecting errands, thank-you notes, kids’ lunches, mid-afternoon antibiotic doses, and therapy appointments fall into now and then?
The crevices that suck down our PowerPoint presentation deadlines, our passport expiration dates, and, you know, Father’s Day cards on a yearly basis?
Yeah, those guys.
Cracks come in different shapes and sizes, and so do the obligations, commitments, and needs we let fall through them. Not every slippage is a disaster. Put another way: some slips are more slippery than others.
So, when it is okay to shrug off those missed work deadlines? The fourth lost pair of reading glasses in five days? The PB&Js you sent with your kids (again?!) to their 100% nut-free school? The social invitation debt you’ve been racking up for the past twelve months?
To be honest, these things rank fairly low on the scale of egregious slips—except the fudged work deadlines, for obvious reasons. Mostly, they’re totally survivable errors and you can let them go. Seriously, don’t sweat ‘em. (Remember how you forgave Grandma for neglecting to bring the Kleenex and hard candies that one time you really needed them? Right? Just forgive yourself in that same way.)
But there are some whopping big cracks that parents of emotionally complex children need to watch out for—fissures that will, and probably should, make us feel awful when our kids slip through them. These are unfortunately built into the “system”—which I use as shorthand for all the systems we parents rightfully engage for various kinds of support: healthcare, mental health care, education, social services, pharmacology, and so on.
No parent can easily or successfully navigate them all. Not folks with MDs, with PhDs, with MBA or BA or BS degrees, nor degrees from the College of Hard Knocks.
Your kid could have benefited from services from your state’s Department of Mental Health if you’d only understood how to work the labyrinthine bureaucracy? Whoa--there was funding, grant money, respite support for families like yours, and no one told you about that?? your son could have gotten the hell out of that awful public-school setting if only you'd had better information about his legal rights—or money to pay for an education advocate to help with that process? Damn! And look how terribly he’s suffered through the long, barren wait. Unforgivable.
Those cracks are doozies. They are the worst. When things slip down those devilishly deep wells, it’s hard to climb out, to make things right. Our families get hurt. We can’t just let those slips go! But what else are we supposed to do, when the deck feels stacked against us?
I have no idea how all this gets righted. I do know that our kids are probably going to keep slipping and that we’ll keep on feeling bad and blaming ourselves for what we did or didn’t do about it. We ARE just human, you know. We screw up. And far worse, the “system” we rely on screws up on our behalf. A LOT. That’s wrong, sad, and infuriating—but it is not our fault. In general, we do our best with the resources we have at the current time.
What more can we do but try to learn the lay of the land, love our kids and other people's kids (for good measure), and figure out how to skirt some of those monster cracks?
And practice a little self-compassion, while we're at it.
