The depths of our neediness
After a busy holiday season, back-to-back illnesses and children exhausted from the starting school transition, my husband and I locked eyes during a particularly long and fraught bedtime with our two daughters. We didn’t say anything but you could read the silence: it shouldn’t be so hard!? When does it get easier? How can they possibly need SO much?
Nothing brings light to the deep depth of our children’s needs quite like bedtime. The babies who wake, again and again, refuse to sleep anywhere but on your body. Toddlers resist bedtime with an intense ferocity, wearing us down with unending requests and draining meltdowns. Preschoolers who startle awake with bad dreams requiring you to squish onto their bed for an arm-numbing amount of back tickles.
As parents, we are extremely good at denying our needs, a necessary survival mechanism in those early months, when we ignored our cues to eat, sleep and go to the bathroom just so our infant could do exactly that. But beyond instinct, it is our learned legacy, established far before parenthood. We are a generation who went to work no matter how sick, who wore shirts sporting ‘no pain no gain’ and who knew to keep a smile on our faces because it wasn’t okay to not be okay. After a long history of having our own needs denied, it’s become our nature to ignore what we need, for better or for worse.
And so it feels completely reasonable to ask the same of our children. To ask and expect our children to reduce their needs. Still, nursing your 8-month-old in the night? Still, cosleeping with your toddler? Some consider this the height of indulgence when we should be teaching our children to be independent, the most prized childhood characteristic in recent history. I know I’m not alone in my feeling that this advice and these expectations aren’t lining up with the life I want to lead. You know, one where I’m not raising my daughters to be hyper-independent, perfectionist people pleasers.
What happens when parents begin to peel back the layers of neediness for both their child and themselves?
I think what is most terrifying is this thought - if we were to truly and fully validate the deep needs of our children, we would be his with a new cascade of questions…
How could I possibly meet all those needs? Is it even possible? Should I even try?
Am I a failure for not meeting those needs?
Oh my gosh…I feel guilty for all the needs I’ve missed.
And then….
What about my needs? Are my needs actually valid?
Heck, what even are my needs?
How could I possibly go about meeting my own needs? Where do I even start?
And then it usually spirals into…
How the heck does anyone do this?
The nuclear family structure makes no sense…what the heck is wrong with the world?
Uhg.
I’ve journeyed along this continuum and sat in discomfort. What is true for me now:
My children's needs are valid. Some I meet. Many I do not either because it’s beyond my capacity or because we’ve made that choice. The choices my family makes will look different than the choices your family makes *and that’s okay!
My needs are valid. It’s an ongoing journey to recognize, validate and take steps toward meeting them. Some I meet, many I do not because it’s either not possible or I’ve chosen not to.
I’ve decided what is most helpful to my family is cultivating our capacity. Some of this happens naturally as needs are more frequently and generously met - but we’re human and we have limits.
The last and most challenging insight I’ve had on needs is this: We need community. And that mythical village does not appear out of thin air. Instead, we are hit with another tough truth, it’s up to us to do this work as well.
So in between loads of laundry, school pick-ups, running a business and pretending to be baby swans, I’m committed to this work
Acknowledging and addressing my own needs
Acknowledging and addressing my children’s needs
Building the community we need
Thank you for reading this far and I hope this piece held a little bit of whatever you needed.
Xo
-Heather