talk provides parental support

Once a week for the past 28 years of parenting I have been convinced that I was a total failure as a mother. Only talking with other parents has convinced me otherwise.
I married a man with two young sons for whom I was the primary caregiver. All my ideas for raising children were quickly revised under the reality of experience. As every mother I had to learn the hard way the truth of an observation my mother made about her concerns for her five children, “about the time I realized they were just going through a phase, they were into another one.”
I wish the phases were labeled and a lot shorter – especially one child’s phase of protesting against buying new shoes. That phase came and stayed way too long.
The child did not like changes. He wanted everything to always be the same, especially shoes. He hated new shoes. Every time we took him shopping for new shoes, his protests insured everyone in the store knew what he thought about new shoes. It was down right embarrassing. I dreaded the day we realized his shoes were worn out. We avoided buying him shoes until he had either outgrown his old ones or they were totally worn out.
Then in spite of his insistence that he did not need or want new shoes, we loaded him in the car and took him to the store. He sat, had his foot sized, began crying, slid off the seat to hide under it and tearfully protested everything about getting new shoes for his growing feet. We scolded, spanked, shoved shoes on his feet and wasted a lot of breath trying to reason him. He still absolutely, passionately hated letting go of an old pair of shoes.
Once a pair was selected, we left the store red-faced with him still insisting, “I will not wear those new shoes. I don’t want them. I hate them.” Of course, he always wore the new shoes, usually the next day. But he also always made sure everyone around heard how much he hated getting them in the first place. The whole ordeal from the beginning to the end was humiliating. Trying to understand his problem, I attributed the source of his protest to all the changes he had had to deal with during his young life.
Thankfully as he grew older and life settled into a routine, his protest waned. I signed him up to take evening swimming classes. As the children splashed behind Styrofoam boards, we mothers chatted. One evening the topic of discussion was shopping for children’s clothes.
I didn’t say a word and I faded into the background and only listened until one mother said her son protested everything new: larger bikes, clothes, shoes whatever. So much for my rationalizations, her son had not had a lot of changes. Only then did I dare talk about our miserable years of shoe shopping with one son. Because we talked, our shared misery was halved, and our eternal maternal guilt faded.
Both sons grew-up and out of their phase of protesting changes. Our son actually developed an intense interest in shopping for the right kind of sneaker. Proving yet again my mother’s insight: about the time I realized it was just a phase, he was into another one.