A Prayer for when my kids don’t do what I want them to do

Photo by Austin Neill on Unsplash

To My Higher Power, who I tend to seek out when I’ve fallen on my ass.

I want my kids to do what I ask, to not leave food wrappers in their room and clothes littered on their floor. I say it’s about heaters and the mouse I found in the basement, but it’s bigger than that.

I worry I haven’t raised them right, and I take it out on them.

I forget I didn’t learn to clean a bathroom till after I graduated from college, two years after I lived in an apartment which definitely had a bathroom that needed to be cleaned with a roommate who was too conflict avoidant, kind, to point this out to me. “Charm only goes so far,” I tell my kids sometimes, knowing in fact how far it sometimes goes.

I want my kids to prioritize school, and so when Seabass is sick and stays home and then asks me if he can go to basketball practice, fury rises up within. We’ve had this conversation so many times. I can’t believe we’re having it again. I am adamant that he can’t go to basketball practice, and none of his reasons sway me. He keeps texting me more reasons as I walk into a meeting. “How are you?” the group asks, and it takes all of me not to shout, “My teenagers are slowly killing me.”

I want Anna to wake up in the morning to her alarm. I keep saying things to her like, “Next year, you will need to do this on your own,” as if that is helpful, as if threatening an unknown future is ever helpful.

I have bought her a special loud analog alarm, and I’ve told her to set three alarms. I have zero confidence that any of them will work.

Perhaps you are not like me and your kids wake themselves up on their own. Maybe they’re real self-starters. If that’s the case, I’m happy for you, but I don’t really want to hear about it. My office mate has a kid like that. The other day I learned that his kid chose a French horn over a PlayStation. I too am conflict avoidant, kind, so I didn’t tell him I didn’t really want to hear about it. I know a few students like that. One of my students just turned 18, and she told me she was so excited because she had just opened a 401K.

I was impressed, genuinely, and I told her so, but later when I thought about it more, it also felt a little depressing.

Anna dyed her hair five times this week. I want her to prioritize school over hair dying, but the 401K kid put things in perspective.

I didn’t dye my hair in high school. I didn’t get a belly button ring when I turned 18. I might as well have started a 401K.

I would know how to parent a kid like me. I would tell that kid to chill out, to relax, to stop stressing over everything. I don’t always know how to parent my own kids, who tell me to chill out, to relax, to stop stressing over everything.

I listened to an interview recently between Glennon Doyle and Tia Levings, a New York Times bestselling author, who escaped a high control Christian Fundamentalist cult. Tia said that some of the families in her church had extremely well-behaved kids. They arrived at church with all their ducklings in a row. They never misbehaved. They were taught early to obey. They were taught not to contradict. They were never taught to think for themselves.

Tia’s reflection put my parenting in perspective. As does Glennon’s when she shares she was once told to pray over her kids for all the things she feared for them, and that if she didn’t get her prayer just right, those fears might come true. Control might be the greatest illusion.

The other day I got a text from an old friend, someone who once took one of my writing classes. It read, Hi Mary, I met your daughter yesterday! What a delightful human being she is! You’ve clearly done an amazing job raising her. Hope you’re well.

People say things like this to me all the time about Anna and Seabass.

They don’t play the French horn, and I’m not sure they even know what a 401K is, but they are good people. They are the best people.

I want to lean into loving them for who they are rather than getting frustrated at who they fail to be, who I think they should be.

Help me not think I’ve failed or rather help me forgive myself for failing to make them better cleaners and organizers, better rule followers. Help me honor instead, what I have instilled in them, deep compassion and empathy, joy, resistance and most of all love.

I would ask for more, but I’ve got to go wake Anna up and make Seabass go to school today.