Parenting is one of the toughest jobs in the world not only because it is a lifelong commitment, but also because parenting makes you responsible for the life of another human being.
If that isn’t daunting in itself, consider how parenting, for the most part, doesn’t come with a “how-to” manual: you make it up as you go.
The scary thing about making it up as you go is that it entails a lot of mistake, a lot of heartache, and a lot of danger. It’s a life-long learning experience.
All of this dawns on Jennifer Campbell one day while she was looking after her kids, and the realization struck her hard.
READ: 13 powerful and positive things you should tell your child every day
In a Facebook which has gone viral, she recalls the many shortcomings she had done both voluntary and otherwise.
One instance was when a neighbor confronted her when she found her two-year-old, having escaped from the yard, playing on the road.
“He was on the road,” the neighbor hissed. “Cars come flying over that hill and they wouldn’t even have seen him! You are lucky I came along when I did.”
Jennifer felt ashamed for herself as a parent. Her failings did not end there.
“A few months after that, my oldest son fell in the backyard and split his head open,” she wrote. “A year after that we were back living in Canada and our middle son (clearly the escape artist) was found wandering around outside in boots and a t-shirt in -20C/-4F weather.”
“Six months after that we were in a busy downtown area and I lost my oldest son. He just biked away from us.”
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“A few weeks ago I walked into the kitchen and my youngest (now two) had a butcher knife in his hands and was trying to cut a block of cheese on the floor.”
“Next month it will be something else,” she wrote. “Next year something else. We really don’t know if one day a terrible tragedy will befall our family—because of a lag in supervision, a safety measure we forgot to take, a lapse in judgment, a child’s curiosity, a teenage boy’s risk. We don’t know because accidents happen.”
She chose to share her failings as a mother so that people could gain a deeper understanding of what parenting is like—that it’s a difficult commitment parents keep out of selfless love.
Many people who have read her post were split into two parties. On one hand, they condemned Jennifer for being an irresponsible parent; on the other, people gave their support for the learning mother.
And that’s why Jennifer shared her parenting journey for everyone to see.
Parents deserve support, not judgment. She wants this credo above all else to come across through her post.
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