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Oct. 19th, 2006 12:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricMothering isn't a job, it's a relationship. It's about my connection to my son and my daughter, and theirs to me. Nobody in the family can apply for a transfer to a different department. We all muddle through on L plates. Hell, my children are so unalike that few of the parenting lessons I absorbed raising the eldest apply to the youngest. He's gregarious, impulsive, chaotic. She's shy, cautious, organised. They need different things. Do I bitch about being a mum sometimes? Sure. Is every moment rewarding? No way. But the hardest job in the world? Please. Put down the violin.
Mothering (or parenting) is not a career; it's more like some endless improvisatonal role play game. Just when you think you've read the situation and worked out the rules, everything changes again. Life, and the kids, keep throwing new elements into the story as it unfolds, and you have to go with it. Like theatresports, the golden rule is that you can't block or reject the new stuff. Teething, tantrums, deceit, rebellion. You have to take it on. It always feels like I work out what to do about the new twist in the plot about five minutes after everyone else. And nobody ever lets me go back and do any of my scenes over again. But what can I do? What I always do. I wing it.
-Michelle Griffin, SMH's 'The Mother Lode', 19/10/06
Mothering (or parenting) is not a career; it's more like some endless improvisatonal role play game. Just when you think you've read the situation and worked out the rules, everything changes again. Life, and the kids, keep throwing new elements into the story as it unfolds, and you have to go with it. Like theatresports, the golden rule is that you can't block or reject the new stuff. Teething, tantrums, deceit, rebellion. You have to take it on. It always feels like I work out what to do about the new twist in the plot about five minutes after everyone else. And nobody ever lets me go back and do any of my scenes over again. But what can I do? What I always do. I wing it.
-Michelle Griffin, SMH's 'The Mother Lode', 19/10/06