farmdoc's blog post number 47

Each November my sharefarmer Sharon shears our ewes. As the shorn ewes enter the paddock, for a few chaotic minutes the lambs don’t recognise their mothers sans wool. Then, gradually, what Sharon calls ‘mothering up’ happens, and quiet returns. Parenting. The books, magazines, courses, programmes, seminars, DVDs and podcasts on the topic, are testament to our instinctive need to parent well. The issue, of course, is defining well. Babies don’t come with an instruction manual, and there is no manufacturer’s product helpline. So parents do the best they can, often handicapped by their own upbringing. Fortunately babies and children are pretty resilient. And fortunately for sweetheart Vivienne’s and my four daughters, their mother was a superb parent during all those years when their father’s parenting was positively harmful – yes, worse than neutral. Only in recent years, after I got my personal act together, did I begin to be a half decent parent. Nowadays I aim to be dependably available to my children but not enmeshed in their lives, to rejoice with them in their successes and support them in their disappointments, to respect them as equal adults, and to respond positively and predictably no matter how I feel and what is happening in my own life. In short, to love them. Oh, and I almost forgot. To reach for my wallet on demand.