The Only Parenting Advice We Need

{ Photography by Claudia Danielson }

Yesterday we attended a gathering for the families of three young girls who died just before Christmas in a car accident a mile down the road from us. Losing a child is as bad as life gets and there’s nothing we can do for the families except hold them in our hearts and pray they can find a path through this terrible loss.

I’m not a theologian or a philosopher, so I’m not even going to try to make sense of what happened. But on the drive home, as I listened to my children in the back of the minivan, I thought about the advice we parents get so often, especially at times like this: enjoy every moment with your children because you never know what might happen.

But that’s not the advice I’d give new parents. I wouldn’t tell them to enjoy every moment and I wouldn’t offer any of the other advice we’re usually given about the importance of date nights or getting the baby on a schedule or how and what to feed them or where they should sleep.

I’d tell this new parent that the only thing he or she needs to do is look at their child. Just stop for a moment every single day and look at their child.

That’s it.

So in the midst of running around to lessons and making dinner and doing homework, look at your child. Let her know you’re doing it, but don’t let her know you’re doing it. Don’t make a big deal about it―you don’t want her to wonder why you’re staring at her…again. Look at her just enough so that on some deep level, she’ll know you’re really seeing her.

It’s easy to look at a baby. He’ll gaze into your eyes and laugh and eat it up. It can be more challenging as he gets older. But don’t give up. Don’t cheat when you look at him and remember what he was like when he was two and loved to snuggle with you. Look past the teenage prickliness and just see him.

Here’s the catch: If you really look at your child, it will hurt. To stop and see him and acknowledge his existence and his importance is painful. There’s a reason why we scurry around so much. We’re not comfortable with our mortality and it’s easier to just keep busy.

Have you ever seen Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town? I saw it in high school, but I didn’t truly understand it until much later, after Andrew was born. The character Emily dies in childbirth and, against the advice of others, she goes back to visit her family and relive her twelfth birthday. The ghostly Emily tries to get her mother to slow down and look at her and when she can’t, it breaks Emily’s heart. “Oh, Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me,” she pleads.

Every day the world will make you question your parenting choices and you’ll worry about whether you’re doing it right. The stakes don’t get any higher than raising children, so it’s no wonder we’re filled with guilt or doubt when we compare ourselves to others or some new study says that even though the experts told us to do one thing, they’re now saying we should do the complete opposite!

But none of that will trouble you because you’re looking at your child every day, and that’s all that really matters.