Survival Parenting

This morning I drove Ila to an 8am track meet because indoor season has begun. If you follow me on Instagram and engage with my Stories, you know my plight as a non-sports person begrudgingly turned dedicated track mom. Being a track mom is something else, I tell ya’. But, I digress. 

I offered to drive one of her teammates and her mom to the meet, too. On our way, we found ourselves talking about the girls’ shoe sizes in relation to their running spikes. The teammate made a comment about the possibility of her feet growing quickly, and her mom responded that it would be a problem if they actually did. I can’t remember what she said verbatim, but she intimated that buying new shoes often would be a financial burden.

Ila running a 1500m in today’s meet

So often as parents, we quickly stifle our kids’ musings with the harsh reality that these ideas come with price tags that exceed our financial capacity. In turn, our kids start to see the world through the lens of impossibility all because we are parenting from a place of survival.

Some of us grew up with similar refrains. Maybe we wanted to do an activity that our peers were doing, but our parents said it was too expensive. Or, maybe we wanted to spend time with our parents in ways that were not possible because they had to work…and they reminded us that if they didn’t work, our livelihood would cease to exist (or some slightly less dramatic version of this).

I didn’t find the mom’s comment atypical at all. But, it really made me think about all of the subtle messages we transfer to our children about what’s possible for them when they get older. As I drove up St. Nicholas Avenue, I thought, “How much of our parenting is informed by survival?”

Ila at the end of a cross country meet in Staten Island…Staten Island, y’all!!! For my non-New York people here, Staten Island is the forgotten borough that most New Yorkers avoid even though it’s actually not that bad at all. It is far from Harlem though.

Many of us make decisions about the jobs we’ll take or the things we buy (and don’t buy) based on our financial capacity. And, don’t get me wrong, being intentional with our finances is very important but what struck me about the shoe comment is how pervasive the idea of having enough plays out in how we live and how we raise our children.

If we make decisions from a place of financial impossibility and limitation, we commit to a life of limitation…limitation in ideas, career, and day-to-day experiences.

Instead of parenting from a place of survival, how might we show up for ourselves and our children by parenting from a place of possibility. Instead of telling our kids and ourselves about what’s not possible based on perceived pragmatism, what if we took a moment to think of our lives from a place of limitlessness?

What might we change in our lives? What might we create? How could we love our loved ones better? How might we plant seeds of what I call “generational abundance” instead of generational mental poverty?

Lots of questions and no answers, but I hope this offers food for thought as you journey on.

Sending my best,

Petrushka
Your Local Ice Cream Lady & Life/Business Coach