Parenting Power

I’ve just been interrupted for the third time in ten minutes. You see, Willow finished the third Harry Potter book today and wants to watch the movie right away, and Forrest, who’s on his shift of kid duty, is fine with that, but only if all three kids want to watch it, and Magnolia, the annoyed tween, isn’t interested today. Rowan’s intelligently staying out of it.

I wish I could, too. But there’s a steady stream of children walking in to let me know what’s going on and how horrible the other child is. I’d like to walk out there, tell them all to knock it off, declare “NO MOVIES FOREVER!” and get back to work. But it’s not my deal. I’m not on parenting duty right now and I sure don’t want to deal with the fallout from some parental decree, so I guess I get to just lock the door and put on headphones and find out what happened after my time is up.

One of the best things I ever learned as a parent was how and when to use my power. I’ve watched endless streams of parents at parks set rules they didn’t really want to enforce, leading to battles over things like playing with mulch or climbing up slides. Hey, I get it, mulch is poky and my rule-following self doesn’t like the two-way slide thing, but I’m not going to spend my afternoon reminding my kid about the same thing over and over unless I really care about it.

Each of us has limited resources in this life. I only have so much time, money or energy to give out. If I’m trying to make my community better, I need to remember two things: Stay in My Lane and Choose the Right Hill to Die On. First, staying in my lane. Part of this is figuring out what my lane is, which I wrote about last week. But the other part of that is resisting the temptation to step in and just help out, a teeny-weeny little bit. I mean, since they’re not handling it, and it looks like they need help, even though they haven’t asked me for it, maybe I could just maybe make a suggestion?

This is a terrible idea. First of all, I’m now not doing what is in my lane, which means no one is, since I gave up my role to take someone else’s. Second, that’s a really good way to make people hate me. No one wants me to step in unasked when they are struggling. Of course, if they’re struggling in a harmful way, of course, we keep people safe. But if my role is to raise money for the PTA, no one wants me to maybe just also step in and try to tell them how to get more volunteers. And also who’s raising the money now?

Second, Choose the Right Hill to Die On. It is so easy for me to get myself wrapped up in this mistake. I have a voice and power in my community. Why not take a stand? If I sound sure enough of myself, surely I’ll convince people and then everyone will just do it the way I like best. Except, again, I’m now wasting my time, money and energy. I’m not listening to people who maybe know more than me. I’m not open to suggestions, or different priorities, or even larger efforts that meet my goals plus other goals. When we’re working for community change, we can’t get bogged down in petty fights. The people who benefit from the status quo certainly won’t.

So, we need to be wise. Where is our energy best placed? What fights matter and what fights don’t? And most of all, what are the people we are trying to help telling us? Don’t ever, ever think that you should die on a hill that no one has asked you to die on. That’s how we get fights about the War on Christmas from people who haven’t stepped foot in a church in years, instead of talking about the real, true needs of people of faith. Or how we spend all our time fighting about some stupid TV show no one watches instead of the real, structural problems our society has. Maybe those are the hills for some people, but are they your hills?