I keep wanting to go back
May 15, 2008 Friends, Parenting
…to my last post and add “and the three things I do wrong” but I’m resisting the urge. I do lots wrong — oh so many things! And the road always leads back to my inconsistency. Pretty much everything I do wrong I do wrong because I either forget why I was doing it or forget I meant to.
That’s all I’m going to say for now because I’m going to the park to play with other fabulous moms who do some stuff wrong, too.
(Other parents are the most important thing to my entire parenting career not to mention my sanity. If you don’t have your people in your life yet, gift yourself some. A like-minded peer group is a wonderful, wonderful thing.)
May 15th, 2008 at 9:25 am
That is sooooo funny because I resisted the urge too. I just finished writing them and thought “now I’m going to add my top 3 “wrongs” - yeah…we are sick!LOL
I agree w/ finding like-minded people (or people whose company you can stand and who make you laugh) - if it weren’t for my peeps I’d be lost.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:27 am
no going bacl
but dude- call me next time you go to the park!
May 15th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Amy, I’m notorious for not making phone calls — I’m phone phobic. We’re going to Whetstone for homeschool meet-up (Paige should be there)! Next time I’ll give you a heads up only this time I didn’t know which park we were going to until 30 minutes ago ‘cuz I didn’t hear from StretchyPants/Abby ’til then!
May 15th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Just to say, Dawn, that I really like your posts, especially the ones that talk about your [brave!] dealing with freelancing and money issues, to your being very real about things when they’re not so clear cut [ex: Madison and her working through her feelings concerning what being adopted means to her]. Brave stuff — and I tell this not really to try to flatter you (though brownie points with you would be cool
though i’m not sure how i’d redeem them — lol perhaps i could redeem them for showtune mp3s 
), but i tell this to you because
` i see the way you are real with your sometimes frazzledness /and/ with your often bravery and “I’ll-try!”-ness, and this is a healthy voice for me to read, really.
` When I stop to remind myself that there is a real Dawn and a real Brett, Madison, Noah, Pennie, behind your words, I come to think “well, there’s a real woman and her life there”, and somehow that all feels more human, you know?
And for someone nervously entering adulthood as I am, to hear how you stumble about and be so real in your blog about things like finance and emotional work and your own strong points about being a parent and your own doubts and when you have a miserable day — all of it –, well,
` Dawn, you’re a good voice for me to read.
Thanks for being here and writing out! Your day to day living and how you’re handling it all — yeah, that is influencing me (and I bet other people who read your blog, too). Something about your voice, it strikes me as real and personal and human, I really dig it, Dawn… .
May 15th, 2008 at 11:10 am
But here’s the thing–and you know I’m not one to stroke for the sake of stroking–to be able to say what you do wrong is to, once again, be a good parent. Now that I deal with the consequences of truly terrible parenting every day, I have completely lost patience with the “bad mother” trope (that’s critique of the culture, not you).
And I totally agree about the importance of other parents–hung out with some of mine at an event at school last night, and was, as always, so grateful for them.
May 15th, 2008 at 11:24 am
i have a group of women that i meet with regularly and the meetings always open with a question. last month it was “what do you like about yourself?” (which we expanded to include “what are you good at?”)
we all realized that it would have been a lot easier to come up with an answer if the question had been the opposite - what do you not like, or what are you not good at. and decided that it was a little sad that that’s true.
May 15th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
So nice meeting you today…. Let’s do it again
May 16th, 2008 at 6:33 am
[...] trip is hard. Dawn is right when she says other parents make all the difference in the world. We need other parents who can be open and honest about the struggles in their [...]
May 16th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Do you do them WRONG? Or not as well as you could? Is it a glass half full or half empty thing?
I doubt you do them wrong but could believe you could things better.
I dont believe mother hood is about right or wrong. It is about being the best mother and person you can be and sometimes that times work and a few tries.