Kristen Welch

We are THAT Family

Moms Need Grit

by

“Mom, I’m having a really bad day” the first line of his text read…

I pulled my car over so I could answer it.

It’s the kind of message from your child that wrings your heart out.

And the urge to run and rescue and relieve their unhappiness is real.

We messaged back and forth and it didn’t take long to discover that even if I could have fixd the situation, I probably shouldn’t.

moms need grit

As I sat in my car on the side of the road, I thought about how my first baby rarely slept and as a result, neither did I. By the time she was 7 or 8 months old, we were both exhausted. I will never forget sitting outside her bedroom door wringing my hands–my husband nearly holding me down, as she cried herself to sleep for the first time.

It nearly killed me.

She finally slept and every night after, she cried less and slept more. Within a couple of days, we were both new people.

It was the beginning of countless lessons that have taught me this truth: Moms need grit. The kind of resolve that helps us dig deep and do what’s best for our kids even when it’s hard on us.

Parenting with grit doesn’t mean we don’t feel compassion for our kids. It means we love them enough to  step aside so they can step up. Sometimes we have to let them fail miserably, so they can figure out how to get it right.

Grit is something our culture with its “I want it now” and “I deserve it” mentality doesn’t always understand.

Yesterday, I told one of my kids if they finished their chores, I would take them on an errand they wanted to go on. They got distracted and didn’t do what I asked. I was sad for both of us when I had to keep my word.

And when another wanted a school yearbook, they were given the opportunity to work for it. Grit is the soil we grow content kids in.

FullSizeRender

Raising grateful kids means parents have to grow up, too. We can’t let our kids control and contrive their way through life.  Motherhood has taught me I can’t give in just to keep peace. I can’t heal heartache or prevent heartbreak. I can’t eliminate or alleviate bad days. I can’t protect my children from every day life.

Oh, I can try, but if I always rush to protect my kids from struggling, I might also prevent them from growing.

“Honey, I wish I could do something to help you. But we both know I can’t fix it. Ask God to help you through this,” I texted back. It wasn’t a spiritual platitude or an empty answer–it wasn’t just good advice–

It was all I had.

Because isn’t this what we want most as parents– To see our kids problem solve, stand on their own and when they waiver and wobble and wonder, turn to the One who is with them when we can’t be?

FullSizeRender

If we want to raise kids who persevere and refuse to give up when the going gets tough, kids who persevere, we’ve got to parent with resolve.

Here are 4 ways we can do so :

  1. Be Quiet |Sometimes the best thing to say is nothing at all. Complaining, whining, arguing. It’s so easy to react to our kids when what they need is our response. And often that response is listening. When they complain or struggle, they don’t always need us to intervene.
  2. Be Consistent | Grit is sheer determination to finish what you start. Our kids wants us to be consistent. They long for us to follow through–it’s another way they feel loved and supported by us. But it takes strength to be consistent and do what we say we are going to.
  3. Be Brave | Parenting is hard. It takes guts to lead your family upstream against cultural norms. It takes courage to do what’s best for your kids even if it’s different from what others are doing.
  4. Be There | Our kids want to know we are there for them–in the highs and lows. When they let us in, it’s usually not so we can fix the hard situation, it’s so that they don’t have to face it alone. We can be there without being everywhere.

The bad day didn’t magically get better, but my child knew that they weren’t facing it alone. And sometimes, that’s exactly how they get through it. It’s how we get them through it.

With grit.

Available Now

error

Reader Interactions

Comments

  3. When my kids were in high school and used to complain, I often asked if I needed to intervene? They would always say no they could take care of the problem. With young adults it is even harder not to intervene but to let them fail. Life lessons are hard on both parents and kids but they are necessary.

    Reply

  4. Grit. You are so right! Great article and so timely for me. Being quiet is probably the toughest. I want to chime in and say, here’s what you do…. But that’s not always what is needed. Thank you for sharing.

    Reply

  5. You have to be willing to watch them make mistakes or they won’t learn. It is hard, but it is so rewarding when they make wise decisions on their own.

    Reply

  7. I love what you said about having courage to go against cultural norms. I find this hardest when my children don’t ‘get’ why we are doing things differently and the ‘why can’t we do it like them? ‘ questions happen. But then this is when great conversations happen and great family discussions, and they always ‘get’ it in the end. You are so right. . . All this takes grit. Thanks.

    Reply

  8. Thank you for sharing this, sometimes it is so hard to parent the way in which we believe to be right. Watching your children go through hard times is probably the worst thing and I’ve only barely begun to experience things like that.

    Reply

  9. My oldest child is in the 4th grade and already, all of her friends (truly, probably 85% of her grade as a whole) have both Facebook and smart phones. We are standing firm on both of those things, but it’s hard. The easy choice would be to give in and let her sign up for Facebook. To gift her a smart phone. But we aren’t going to do it, at least not in the near future. When she tells me “So and so has Facebook” or “So and so has a phone”, I respond “That’s great! I’m not so and so’s mom.” It’s against the cultural norm and it takes grit and I’m so glad you pointed it out.

    One day she’ll thank me, right? =)

    Reply

    • Be encouraged! My kids are 15 and almost 12 and still no smart phones or social media. We have wavered, but it actually gets easier and we’ve had some hard experiences that taught my son that he’s better off without it. We have open conversations about the subject and the whys as they have gotten older. I also tell them that they are the few people that can have conversation, use their imagination, and not be distracted by a phone :).

      Reply

    • Great thing to do. Maybe not, maybe she will not thank you as you expect. But you will have the satisfaction of knowing you did what you thought best for her!!!

      Reply

  10. I’m a grandmother. We grandmothers need to remind ourselves that grandmothers should not always indulge. We need to support our children’s actions as parents and help them be consistent.
    And of course, the hardest thing to do (or not do) is usually the right thing to do.

    Reply

  11. Parenting is hard. Parenting with grit is even harder. But I always remind myself that I’ll have to leave my children one day. My job thus is to train them to be able to survive and lead their own lives when I’m long gone.

    Reply

  12. I appreciate your emphasis on how we need a higher goal for our parenting (for our life!) than to make things easy and struggle-free. For many years the goal of my life was to minimize struggles and maximize “fun”, and so I did the same for my kids – I parented with an eye to helping them minimize the hard stuff and maximize the fun stuff. That sort of parenting both stems from a lack of grit and produces a lack of grit – and it ultimately stems from having no higher purpose that is worth a gritty *striving*, and produces people who have no higher goal than to seek pleasure and avoid pain :(.

    I especially appreciated your strong emphasis on how developing grit is something we do *with* our kids – that a loving parental presence is not only *not* an impediment to developing grit but in fact is *essential*. “The bad day didn’t magically get better, but my child knew that they weren’t facing it alone. And sometimes, that’s exactly how they get through it. It’s how we get them through it.” This closing really resonated with me :).

    Which is why I was surprised by your using letting your baby cry herself to sleep alone, without you to support her, as an example of “parenting with grit”. Absolutely that was a very hard thing for you, but “parenting with grit”, as you explained it, isn’t about doing any old hard things, but about responding instead of reacting, about consistency and finishing what you started, about doing what you know is right even when you are going against the cultural flow, and about how our loving presence is *the* thing our kids need from us (not our fixing prowess ;)). And so it seems to me that leaving your baby all alone to struggle through a very hard thing (learning to sleep) – so that *she* was getting through it by *herself* instead of it being *y’all* getting through it *together* – not only is that *not* an example of “parenting with grit”, it actually *violates* what it means to parent with grit. I really appreciate your overall point, and I don’t want to see it diminished by a faulty example, one that sets a parent’s loving presence in opposition to gritty parenting :(, instead of keeping them in harmony, as your overall post eloquently explained.

    Reply

    • I thought letting the baby cry herself to sleep was an excellent example. It’s heartwrenching, but best for all concerned in the end.

      Reply

      • No, actually it’s not best to let a tiny human who depends entirely on adults protecting and comforting them to cry themselves to sleep. That’s ridiculous. Of course, once the baby realized no one will take care of them they will stop. It’s cruel and lazy parenting. Once the child is old enough to be somewhat self sufficient, it’s different. Then they can learn to self-soothe. That’s just common sense, which anyone who intends to have and raise children should have.

        Reply

  14. What do you do to have your children earn money for year books? I have 3 children and every year I buy them each a year book but I am always conflicted because I do not want to spend all of that money. At this point, how do I change the game an tell them they will work for their year book?

    Reply

    • Yearbooks are so expensive and they push them in every grade. We made a deal with our older kids when they were in elementary school that we would buy a yearbook for every last year they were in a school (so that’s 5th and 8th grade for my kids) and then all 4 years of high school. If they wanted them for every year, they can save and do jobs to buy one. All my kids have chosen differently 🙂

      Reply

  15. I love what you said about having courage to go against cultural norms. I find this hardest when my children don’t ‘get’ why we are doing things differently and the ‘why can’t we do it like them? ‘ questions happen. But then this is when great conversations happen and great family discussions, and they always ‘get’ it in the end. You are so right. . . All this takes grit. Thanks.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.