Doing Our Best

Parenting is hard work. We all know that. We all know that in the end, if we did our best, that’s all anyone can ask.

Every stage of parenting has its challenges. That infant that won’t sleep? She will get bigger, eat more and sleep longer. Really.

That toddler who loves to throw food on the floor just to see the mess it makes? He probably won’t still be doing that when he’s fourteen.

The five year old who unrolls the toilet paper just to see it pool on the floor? She’ll outgrow that one. I hope.

The point it, every single age has its own irritation.

And we all do our best to face those irritations and get past them.

So I mentioned that Alyssa wanted to dye her hair black, right? I thought about. I considered the precedence we might be setting. I pondered the ramifications of saying yes versus saying no.

I wondered if this was something I wanted to fight or if I wanted to embrace her desire for change and independence.

In the end, I bought a hair dye that will wash out in 28 shampoos and we did it. We colored her dark blond hair black.

She loves it. She is ecstatic that she not only looks like Katy Perry on a good hair day but also like Snow White. She actually likes the Snow White comparison more than the Katy Perry one.

In the end, I decided to go along with the black hair thing for several reasons. One, hair is such a temporary thing. It will grow/wash out. We can change it tomorrow if she wants us to.

Two, this is one of those things where I thought it was more important to her that I say yes than it was to me that I say no. I know sometimes we, as parents, get caught up in doing things our way. It can be so easy to set random rules and declare them to be ‘the way it is’ and expect our kids to just go along with it because we said so. But sometimes, rules need to be reconsidered, discussed.

That doesn’t make me less a parent that the one who declares something like, “You cannot dye all the hair on your head until you are 18.” And is never willing to even discuss this rule.

Three, I hope that by agreeing to let my nine year old dye her hair black (the box declared this a ‘soft black’ which…is that different from a hard black? I don’t know.) I am setting up a world in which she can come to me about everything, the big things and the small stuff. I want her to know that I’ll listen, I’ll consider her feelings and thoughts. I’ll be there, no matter what she has going on. I hope that I am showing her that she doesn’t have to sneak around, she can bring things up and we can discuss them. And in the end, I hope that I am showing her that by talking to me, she and I can make decisions based on what is best for her. Not based on rules I might have made when she was a toddler but rules based on who she is as an individual with feelings, thoughts, opinions of her own.

I want her to talk to me so that she’ll also listen to me. I want to leave the door open for things that might come up and when those things do come up and she comes to me, I want her to know that when I say no to a request, it’s because it’s important that I say no, not because I want to be the boss of her.

All this is not to say that the parent who does make the rule that there will be no hair dyeing in their house until their children are 18 year olds are wrong either.

What works for me and my child might not work for them and their child. Heck, what works for me and Alyssa might not work for me and Olivia.

In the end, I would like to think we’re all just doing the best we can. Like I said, that’s all anyone can ask of us.