There is an obsession with figuring out parenting. We create types, follow patterns, compare contrast judge. Because we all want to know if we are doing this right. If we are right. We call it a job.
In my short time here, in this body, as this person, I believe a job is something you do as a trade. Something you do solely because you are paid to do it, though you may love or hate or not care either way about it. A job is something you most likely receive training for, whether on or off the job. Something you could spend years preparing for or fall into.
In those last few lines, parenting may seem like a fitting analogy, but that's only because we've made it such. We've made parenting a job. We spend years prepping ourselves, or accidentally fall into it. But that's not it. Parenting is not a job. A job is a job. This is a lifestyle. It is a perspective. No job could bend my point of view quite like becoming a mother. It is a transformation that is more like entering into a cocoon. You will be physically changed and there is no going back to the person you were before, though part of that person, its core, lives within you.
And my parenting type? Rubbish. I am to keep this person alive. I am to teach them how to speak and walk. I am to love them. Everything else is accessory. Soccer games and pre-school. School pictures. Baby Einstein and cable television. Drawing inside the lines.
I get caught up in it. It is society and society is a large bully, a cattle shoot. Then I remember, they are them. I am me. My best me, my most patient and self-loving me will hopefully teach them to be patient and self-loving, as well.
Parenting seems to be more about teaching myself. Kids, after all, are natural learners.