The parenting journey is the most humbling of journeys. There’s nothing quite like trying to raise a child into a competent, compassionate, independent adult to make you confront all of your own many shortcomings. It’s not long before we’re doing all the things we said we would never do, even as the annoying phrases our parents used to say to us are suddenly flowing freely from our own mouths.
The road on this journey is paved with mistakes both big and small, but even the smallest misstep can morph into a full-blown fuck-up. Give into a tantrum once—just once—because you are exhausted and you simply cannot listen to them scream for one more second (your body is actually buzzing!), and you have just made life so much more difficult for yourself with each subsequent tantrum. You can be broken—they see that now.
Even if you have a partner you see eye-to-eye with on just about everything, you will find yourself debating whether it’s OK to let your kid quit a sport after only a month; or how much back-talk is normal versus disrespectful and unacceptable; or whether they’re still too young to have a smartphone. You often don’t know which path is the right path until you’re so far down it that there’s no turning back, and you either sigh with relief that you chose correctly or you wish fervently for a do-over.
But there is also a deep camaraderie in parenting—I will screw up in ways you will not. You will screw up in ways I will manage to avoid. We can learn from each other—especially from those who came before us, those who are farther down the road and can more clearly see the error of their ways.
I know now that my son would have responded much more favorably to a time-in-style of parenting, rather than the Supernanny-esque time-outs we opted to lean in on. I don’t know if that’s the worst parenting mistake I’ve ever made (I’m sure my son could offer up a few contenders), but it’s maybe the one I regret most, largely because of how long it went on before I course-corrected. But he’s just on the cusp of his 12th birthday now, so I’ve still got plenty of mistakes ahead of me.
Commiserate with me—what’s the worst parenting mistake (or two, or 47) you’ve ever made? What advice would you give to another parent facing the same situation or dilemma? What mistakes do I definitely not want to make as I approach the teenage years? Leave a comment below, and if we get enough sage advice, I’ll round it up in a future Lifehacker post.