Parenting Wins

Parenting wins.

What are those?

Ha.

As I stare at two laundry baskets overflowing in my living room begging to be folded, the mountain of toys on the rug that I said I would sort through last week, or the two daughters still in pajamas at one PM on a Sunday afternoon, I'm suddenly not entirely sure.

Ha, again.

Parenting wins, my fellow moms and dads, are those fleeting moments when the universe conspires to let things go right for us; those little glimmers of hope that allow us to feel like we know what the heck we are doing when most of the time, we do not. You know the moments, the ones when your picky eater finishes a plate full of broccoli and pesto without a fuss, when your not-so-great sleeper finally sleeps through the night, when your anxious child joins in on a game of tag at the playground without any prompting from you, or when your husband hangs his jacket in the coat closet instead of on one of the chairs at the kitchen table.

Oh wait, that last one was a "married-for-13-years" win.

Hahaha, oops, please disregard.

But those parenting ones are pretty great—probably because they don't seem to happen as often as we'd like. So when they do, enjoy it. I know I do. I've also found that allowing myself to bask in my wins helps me to recognize other parents' wins; ones they may have missed, and ones I can point out so they start to see them too. Parenting is hard enough as it is. We need to help each other see the good that is so easy to miss.

My 12-year-old spent the first week of Spring Break at a basketball skills camp at the high school she'll be attending in the fall. The camp was open to boys and girls in grades four to seven and would be a week of working on skills, doing some conditioning, and of course, having some fun. We arrived on the first day and she was quick to sign in, put her stuff away and start warming up. I hung back for a bit to watch and noticed that there were only a few girls in attendance—eight by my count—and in comparison, there were about 50 boys. No big deal to me, or to her, but I noticed.

Apparently another little girl noticed too because I could hear her at the corner of the gym behind me, begging her mom through tears and sobs to let her leave.

"Please, I don't want to do it anymore, I changed my mind."

"Sweetheart, just give it a try."

"No, please let me leave. I really want to leave."

"We are already here. You've gotta get out there and try."

"I can't do it. Don't make me do it."

My heart broke for her, both the little girl and the mom. My nine-year-old deals with anxiety and though we have made leaps and bounds in the last year thanks to an awesome support system, she still works on it every day. New settings mixed with unfamiliar people can be especially difficult for her, and when boys seem to outnumber the girls in those settings, it can be even worse. In those moments I've tried everything I could think of to help her "get over it," whatever the "it" may be. I've been sympathetic to the point of coddling her, I've been tough to the point of seeming to be uncaring and I've been defeated to the point when I had zero clue what came next. It is not easy and it has taken endless amounts of time, patience and different resources and techniques to get her to where she is today.

So I felt for them. Both of them.

I shot the mom a sympathetic smile and watched as some other moms tried to help, but the extra attention only seemed to make it worse, so I tried not to listen as they worked through it.

About 15 minutes later, I saw the little girl timidly walk out onto the court and take her place with the other girls, dribbling and shooting while waiting for the day to start. I looked over at the mom as she breathed a huge and heavy sigh of relief and had to walk over to congratulate her.

"Way to go mom, you did it."

"I almost didn't," she said.

"But you did. And so did she."

I've have those same moments with my own little girl and a lot of the time, it ended in a tantrum with a side of tears. But every once in a while, we find a way that works. She hears me, I hear her, and we get to a place where, after some back and forth, she is able to do the very thing she was sure she couldn't. And when that happens, it feels pretty damn great.

And it was pretty damn great to watch it happen too. They both looked so victorious, mom and daughter alike.

So cheers, moms and dads, to the fails of today that will be wins tomorrow; cheers to the wins you catch and to the ones you miss, and cheers to you who do it all day, every day, without losing heart.

You the real MVPs.