On Instagram, it might have appeared that my children’s father and I did everything right when it came to parenting. My sons — who are now 25 and 27 — each earned their Eagle Scout, graduated high school, went to college, and based on the updates and pictures I posted, they probably seemed like perfect kids. The thing is, perfect doesn’t exist and in the world of curated social media posts, one family’s success story is often filled with quiet mistakes, secret crises, and untold moments of so-called failure. That was our story.
Everything wasn’t as it seemed
I thought I was the cool — but tough — mom, the one whose kids could talk to her about anything, but one who also had firm boundaries and expectations. School was important, as was keeping your word, being helpful, kind, and forward-thinking. It was okay to laugh, have fun, and spend time with friends. But it was just as important to be smart. I spent a majority of my sons’ childhoods talking to them in depth about things like safe sex, the dangers of drugs and alcohol, and avoiding peer pressure.
While I posted glowing reports about my oldest son’s grades, his hobby building computers, his travels abroad, and his witty sense of humor, only my closest friends and family knew about the time I kicked him out of the house two weeks before his graduation after our millionth argument about doing chores and being respectful turned south. Only my then-husband knew the toll that moment took on our relationship and how hard it was to repair, even though he moved back in a week later.
When, at the age of 20, that same son told me he and his girlfriend were actively trying to get pregnant and that he felt “ready” for a child — even though he was unemployed — I didn’t turn to Instagram to share my concerns. But when they announced her pregnancy a few short months later, I happily shared the news of our newest family member.
My youngest son had his own struggles
Even my youngest son, who looked like a golden boy in my social media posts, had his own fair share of moments that made me doubt my ability to parent.
He was our honor and AP student, ran cross country, and was on the football team. He had a part time job, and his entire academic and career path seemed planned from the time he was 13.
When he had his first sexual experience as a teen, he talked to me about it openly, but also revealed he didn’t wear a condom.
Apparently, even though I’d spent the entirety of his pubescent years teaching him and his brother about STDs, teen pregnancy (something I had personal experience with as I’d had my sons at 17 and 19), and the importance of consent, partner selection, and not breaking the law, he decided to not only skip the condom, but had sex in public at a beach on base where we were stationed, not far from our house.
Thankfully, he didn’t get caught, his partner did not become pregnant, and the STD panel he later took was negative. Of course, I didn’t share any of this on Instagram.
Two years later, he started smoking marijuana, drinking alcohol, and skipping classes. For six months, his father and I were on edge, trying to force our son into sobriety while desperately trying to keep him safe. In the end, it wasn’t the begging, pleading, grounding, threatening, or yelling that saved our son, it was a bad case of psychosis he experienced while high that terrified him so badly, he quit using altogether.
The only people who knew were our closest friends. A year later when he graduated high school, I proudly posted his picture with a list of his accomplishments, never uttering a word about the months of chaos we’d endured.
Today, they are different people
Now that same son is engaged to a wonderful young lady, in a masters program for biochemistry and has his eye on pursuing an MD-PhD. Meanwhile, my oldest is an amazing single father to two beautiful little girls, working on his undergraduate degree, and still building (and selling) computers in his free time. Both of them are drug-free, only drink on occasion, pay their taxes, and have never been in trouble with the law. They’re also genuinely funny, smart, and deeply kind people. In my eyes, they are both success stories.
We all have unique stories
Did I do everything right as a mom? Of course not. Although I loved them, kept them fed, sheltered, and (to the best of my ability) informed, I made mistakes, too. Looking back, I realize I wasn’t as cool as I thought, and often failed to really listen to my sons when they needed me. I yelled when I was upset, fought with their dad often, and missed the mark when it came to seeing them as people with their own unique wants and needs. Maybe things would have been different had their dad and I divorced sooner, had I done the healing work I needed to do to recover from my own chaotic and abusive childhood, and had I been a more patient and understanding mom. Or maybe, things would have remained the same.
Watching my sons grow into men taught me to consider another possibility: What if everything went exactly how it was supposed to and my sons’ experiences weren’t failures at all, just benchmarks of growth in their own individual stories? Try as we might, our kids are going to grow up and do things we don’t want them to do. Even things we’ve specifically told them not to do. Sometimes those choices will be a reflection of our own failures as parents, but often, have nothing to do with us at all. As easy as it is to blame ourselves when things go wrong, it’s also important to remember that every perceived failure is an opportunity to learn, change, and grow. There is no such thing as perfect parenting (regardless of what you see on social media) and every person — even our kids — has the right to choose their own adventure. Sometimes that leads to failure, but with enough love and patience, things often turn out just fine.
In the end, I didn’t get parenting right one hundred percent of the time, but that didn’t make me a bad mom, it just means I am human, and so are my kids, even if I only post the highlight reels on Instagram.
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