I have a love/hate relationship with social media.
I understand that it’s an extremely powerful tool that can be used to connect with people you otherwise may have never met. It’s a tool that you can use to grow your passions into a business and to find ways to share your life with the world. But, I also understand that social media can thrust you into a downward spiral of playing the comparison game and questioning what it is you can do to make your life better.
“What does social media have to do with parenting a toddler?”, I’m glad you asked.
In a world of perfectly curated parenting moments, and comedic once in a lifetime toddler snapshots, social media makes me realize just how difficult parenting a toddler really is at times. Is it the beautifully captured candid moments we see come across our screens daily? Yes. But it’s also a slew of other things that can be difficult to handle when you feel ill-equipped and unprepared.
Josiah turned three-years-old in November of last year. Before his third birthday, I would’ve said that I had this toddler mom's life down packed, then an earthquake of a shift happened two weeks before his big day.
I don’t believe in terrible two’s or tantrum three’s and that unbelief was helped by the fact that Josiah’s two’s weren’t at all terrible. (Disclaimer, I am completely against calling children anything with negative and unsavory connotations). Two full weeks before my baby boy hit the big 3, he developed a personality that I had never encountered before in my life. He started acting totally different. All of a sudden his vocabulary was filled with “no’s”, “uh-uh’s”, inaudible grunts, and he was falling out on the floor as if the Holy Spirit had overcome him.
And potty training? Forget about it.
It was at that moment that I realized I had no idea what I was doing and that the parenting style I thought I would have would take real intentional work to achieve.
I love being a mother. It’s not a thing that I ever put much thought into being, but now that I am one, I enjoy it. I enjoy tickle time and playing made-up games like “hi-yah”, and bedtime cuddles. I don’t enjoy tantrums, or being talked back to. I don’t enjoy losing my crap on my child because I’m tired and need to cook, but he wants my attention which in his world is more pressing than anything I have going on; which causes me to have to check my emotions and apologize to him- because yes, children deserve apologies too.
Parenting a toddler is the hardest thing I’ve ever done because it forces me to evaluate myself, it forces me to be cognizant of the way I speak and act because my son isn’t randomly picking up traits of impatience from his teddy bear. Parenting a toddler forces me to be consistent because toddlers thrive off of schedules and consistently implemented parenting rules and techniques. Parenting a toddler gives me no choice but to learn how to process and regulate my emotions because it’s not his fault that I feel the way I do.
Parenting a toddler also makes me have to tap into my inner child so that we can dream up imaginary lands and mystical animals. It teaches me how to love unconditionally because that’s what children do. My son doesn’t care that I look a mess today, he doesn’t care that I added one too many eggs to the recipe, or that the number on the scale could be a little less.
Parenting a toddler is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s also the most beautiful.
I love being Josiah’s mom, even when he throws a tantrum because Starbucks is closed and he can’t go get a cake pop.
Now, when I scroll through my social media feeds I’m thinking about how unattainable all those perfect moments are. I have my own perfect moments with my tot, and I have my own not so perfect moments just like millions of parents do. What matters, is what I’m doing to make my parenting experience, and his childhood experience better.
