I feel now like a hinge between generations, which is strange. It just happened recently. I think it’s because my daughter is so much like me at her age. I feel like I’m reliving my own mother’s experience of raising me.       -Maggie Smith

This is one of the joys and discomforts of parenting in my experience. To stand between the generations with a new self-awareness and understanding of my parents.

I revisit all the things my parents did “wrong” raising me-and see and understand why they did what they did.  I felt this most acutely sitting at the dining room table once when we were having a serious talk with our children, who were pre-teen and teen at the time, about a parental diagnosis and possible health outcomes. I remember my parents having to tell us about my mother’s cancer when I was 12. I always thought they were too opaque, hadn’t told me enough, or prepared me enough.

And here I was not wanting to over whelm or scare my kids unnecessarily. I wanted to let them lead with their questions, knowing they would not know how to ask all of them.  My bottom line was not to withhold any information that we had, and I also wanted not to tell more than they were ready for.  Balancing those is not easy. 

Did we strike a better balance, or is MS just less life threatening than cancer? I am not sure. But it opened me up to a deeper understanding of my parents.

It also chastened me. I too will make mistakes, do things my children will think wrong, and perhaps one day recognize as a reasonable option when looking at their own children.

In less dramatic moments I can also see that much of my parenting is, surprisingly often, more about what my parents did or didn’t do, than about what my kids are doing. I want to use the tools they used, or utterly reject them, based on how I reacted to them as a kid. In my better moments I can look for the tools that fit the situation currently before me, or are best suited for my kids. Hopefully I do that most of the time but occasionally it means consciously consciously not reaching back for the one my parent used, or I wish they had used.  That takes the awareness that I may get when I am standing as the hinges