Positive Parenting Isn't Perfect Parenting: What 24 Years of Raising Children Taught Me

I think I always wanted to be a Mom. Somewhere deep inside of me, I believed I was made to be one. And, by the way, I was pretty sure I was going to be really good at it. I had a pretty clear picture of how I wanted to raise my children.

Then I actually had them. Three children in three years.

Three very different personalities, each with their own needs, strengths, quirks, and lots of spirit. Let's just say books about raising “spirited” children didn't make their way onto my bookshelf by accident. And, apparently, none of them had much interest in following the parenting plan I'd created in my mind. I learned quickly what most first-time parents eventually discover:

Kids don't come with instruction manuals. Neither do parents!

Spoiler alert: In the grand scheme of this messy, awesome thing called life, we survived. I think we did okay. Maybe even better than okay. Despite mistakes, tears, slammed doors, sleepless nights, and the occasional threat that somebody was going to end up in handcuffs.

Kidding. There were no handcuffs. I just wanted to make sure you were paying attention.

I NEED MY MOM

When my third child was born, my twins had just turned two. My mom came to stay for two weeks to help me adjust. Here I was—married, reasonably capable, hardworking, and now the mother of three. I should have had this.

I did NOT.

Two weeks flew by. When it was time for my mom to leave, I broke down and cried. And I mean cried.

“I don't know if I can do this,” I told her. “I don't know if I'm ready to be a mom.”

She looked at me with compassion—and the little smirk that only an experienced mother could give her daughter.

“Well, it's a little late for that, don't you think? Three kids and now you're not sure?” Then she reassured me: “You'll be just fine, sweetheart.”

But at that moment, I didn't feel fine. I needed my mom!

What I didn’t understand then was that I wasn’t supposed to have it all figured out. Parenting is one of those strange jobs where so much of what you need to know becomes clearer after you've already done it.

Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar often teaches that we learn through experience. We learn to teach by teaching, and we learn to parent by parenting.

Apparently, I had just enrolled in the most intensive hands-on course of my life.

And learn we did. Just when we thought we'd figured something out, the baby changed. Then the toddler changed. What worked beautifully with one child didn't work with another. We got things right. We got things wrong. They changed. We changed.

And somehow, eventually, we had adults. I'd love to tell you there was a beautiful straight path from babies to adulthood, and that somewhere along the way I discovered the secret to raising children.

There wasn't. And I didn't.

There were plenty of mistakes—theirs and mine—and moments when we wondered if we'd all survive them. We did.

What I do have now is something I didn't have then:

Hindsight.

The Ordinary Things Weren't So Ordinary

Looking back, so much of what mattered wasn't spectacular. It was actually pretty ordinary.

Family dinners. Breakfast before school. Church. Saying grace. Movie nights. Vacations. Grandparents and cousins. Sports. Bedtime stories and prayers. Traditions. Conversations. Showing up. Just time spent together.

Presence.

At the time, I wasn't thinking, Today I am constructing my children's psychological foundation. I was trying to get breakfast on the table, find the missing soccer cleat and keep some semblance of sanity, without totally losing my mind.

I even coached basketball and soccer despite not knowing the first thing about coaching. But I learned. Apparently—learning by doing wasn't limited to parenting.

None of it felt particularly profound at that time. It was simply what our family did. But research by Barbara Fiese helps explain why those seemingly ordinary experiences matter. Family routines and rituals can contribute to children's well-being while strengthening family identity and connection (Fiese, 2006).

I thought we were just going on another family vacation or saying grace because that's what our family did. I didn't realize we were building our family’s story and reinforcing the values and faith that mattered to us.

Today, my grown children still choose those traditions—all of them. Our two-week extended family vacation every summer remains a priority for all of us.

Maybe all those moments were quietly building something after all: a place where they belonged.

Often it was the smallest moments that stayed with me. When my twins were little, my daughter Cassidy always wanted one more story, one more back tickle, one more prayer at bedtime.

And I was always tired!

After spending the day being needed by everyone, sometimes I wanted them, for the love of God, to GO TO BED. So sometimes I said no. One night, as she asked for one more story, a thought came flooding into my mind: If I keep saying no, she's going to stop asking.

Today, what wouldn't I give to have that little girl climb into bed and ask for one more story. But hindsight can be unfair. Sometimes I truly had nothing left, and everybody really did need to go to bed.

That's parenting.

The lesson isn't to always read another story. It's that sometimes we don't recognize the significance of an ordinary moment until it isn't ordinary anymore.

There was always going to be another load of laundry. There wasn't always going to be a two-year-old asking me for one more story.

What Mattered—and What I Was Really Raising

I spent years worrying about grades, friends, sports, behavior, decisions, and disappointments.

Was I doing enough? Too much? Should I step in? Back off? Was whatever catastrophe was happening on Tuesday going to destroy their lives forever?

With hindsight, I would have worried less. Paused more. Listened longer. Fixed less. Trusted myself more. Trusted them more.

One of the ideas I have come to appreciate through the work of Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar is what he calls “permission to be human”—allowing ourselves to experience the full range of emotions rather than believing we should somehow eliminate the painful ones (Ben-Shahar, 2007). That applies to our children, too. We have to give them permission to experience their humanity as well.

I couldn't prevent difficult things from happening to my children. But I could help prepare them for when they did.

I wasn't raising children to become better children. I was raising them to become capable adults.

It changed how I think about successful parenting. Can they love and be loved? Make mistakes and take responsibility? Make decisions? Survive disappointment? Change direction? Ask for help? Stand on their own?

And do they know that standing on their own doesn't mean they have to stand alone?

My children aren't evidence of whether I was a “successful” parent. They are human beings with their own choices and stories. They struggled, I struggled, we made mistakes and life happened. My job wasn't to control what they did with their lives. My job was to love them, guide them and help prepare them to navigate their own.

This is positive parenting. Not creating a perfect childhood but helping build a foundation strong enough for real life.

The Parent Matters Too

There's someone else in that foundation I sometimes forgot. 

Me.

I’d tell my children to sleep, eat well, move, pray, rest, learn, have meaningful relationships, ask for help, find purpose—while believing those rules didn’t apply to Mom.

Apparently, Mom was supposed to run herself into the ground.

Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar's SPIRE model considers five interconnected dimensions of well-being: spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational and emotional (Ben-Shahar, 2021). 

Practicing those dimensions made a tremendous difference in my life and helped me understand that taking care of myself wasn't taking something away from my children. It was part of what I was teaching them.

Back to Mom

Which brings me back to my mother.

Twenty-four years ago, I begged her not to leave because I didn't know if I could do this. I was a mom, but I was also a daughter who desperately needed her mom!

She didn't tell me how to raise my children. She didn't stay and take over. She loved me. She supported me. She reminded me she was there. And then she did something I understand very differently now:

She believed I could do it. And she let me discover that I could.

There it was—the very thing I had spent years trying to give my own children.

Not a life without struggle. Not an answer to every problem. Not someone who would rush in and fix everything.

I was giving them a foundation. I was telling them, I'm here. I love you. I believe in you. You can do hard things.

Somewhere in all the beautiful and the messy, the things I got right and the things I would do differently, I learned how to be a mother.

Not before I had children.

After I had them. By raising them.

And somewhere along the way, I realized my mother had been right all along.

I just realized it a little late.

References

Ben-Shahar, T. (2021). Happier, no matter what: Cultivating hope, resilience, and purpose in hard times. The Experiment.

Ben-Shahar, T. (2007). Happier: Learn the secrets to daily joy and lasting fulfillment. McGraw-Hill.

Fiese, B. H. (2006). Family routines and rituals. Yale University Press. 

About the Author

Victoria Wilson is an educator, speaker, writer, and coach with a passion for wellbeing, recovery, empowerment, and what helps us flourish. She holds a master’s degree in Happiness Studies and is pursuing a PhD in Happiness Studies under Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar. With more than two decades of personal and professional experience in the substance use and alcohol recovery community, Victoria is especially interested in what comes next—after the crisis has passed and the work of rebuilding a life begins. Her work explores recovery, identity, meaning, and human flourishing. As she works toward LCADC licensure, she continues to explore how people move beyond simply surviving toward truly flourishing. Victoria is a mother of three and considers motherhood her greatest joy.