What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming a Parent

I spent nearly a decade in various professional roles that led me to believe I was a “child expert” before ever becoming a parent myself. Before becoming a mother, I had values and expectations that felt thoughtful and well-intentioned, but then I experienced what I can only describe as aggressive humbling from the moment I held my daughter in the hospital. Now that my daughter has just celebrated her fourth birthday, I finally feel ready to express what I’ve learned from parenthood.

1. Having high expectations of myself as a parent can make things harder

I have a distinct memory of Margot’s third week of life. she was screaming at the top of her lungs (we where on the 4th hour of relentless crying), and I was attempting every soothing approach I could muster and felt like an absolute failure. In a moment of desperation,I Googled “how to make a baby stop crying.” As I read the search results, I felt tears well up in my eyes.

“I have been a play therapist for years, a former educator, and am about to finish my dissertation about children.I should know what to do. Why is this so hard?”

I entered parenthood with a strong belief that I should know everything, that I would remain patient and regulated, and that I would consistently respond in the ways I have instructed parents to do for years. What I didn’t anticipate was how heavy those expectations would feel in the early days of parenthood and beyond. My high expectations left little room for grace or for the process of learning. If I had held the same belief I do now (nobody knows what they are doing),I believe I could have given myself permission to climb the steep learning curve with more ease.