About ten years ago, my oldest daughter was upstairs in the loft on the kids’ computer, playing a game that involved solving puzzles on one level in order to advance to another one. Lane loved those games.

But this day, she was stuck, unable to progress, and she called down to me to come up and help her.

Lord help me: I did not want to march up those stairs and play that game. I tend to avoid puzzle-level games, and I was tired and I had a zillion things to do in the short time I was not slaving away at a desk job and so I said, secretly guiltily, “No.”

She was hacked. She complained that I never help her. She grew sullen. I felt horrible, yet I did not head up the stairs.

And fewer than five minutes later, a delighted voice yelled, “GOT IT! I GOT IT! AND *I* DID IT….”

“All by yourself,” I supplied. “How does that feel?”

The self-satisfied voice floated down: “Great.”

Fast forward to this week, and that same happy voice called me from college to inform me that, unbeknownst to me, the new cell phone we had bought her had not worked, nor had the next two phones our provider had given her, so she had negotiated a better, higher-priced phone at the same lower fee. The only assistance she needed from me was our PIN number on the account in order to continue her negotiations with the cell phone provider. That happy phone call was the only clue I had something wasn’t working right with the phone.

I told her to keep the rebate, as she had earned it, reminded her that, had she needed assistance we would have been happy to give it, hung up the phone, and just about wept for joy.

I have been a parent for almost twenty-one years now, and it’s safe to say that 90% of the moments in those years have been filled with guilt, mostly about that, “Damn, I’m too tired to haul my butt upstairs and help you with a puzzle” kind of thing. Mind you: I have provided everything those kids ever needed. I have worked up to three jobs at a time to keep them in all the things they needed and some of the things they wanted.

But still: I felt guilty when, after getting home from working some combination of jobs, I was just too tired to make cookies or do their homework for them or finish their science projects or play a game. And even when I wasn’t working so much, when I was a stay at home mom, much of the standard kid pursuits just left me cold…can I tell you how much I loathe playing Chutes and Ladders? The big problem with C&L is that you can’t cheat to lose (because only a nimrod cheats to beat a five year old at a board game…the only honor here is rigging the game so you lose, and quickly).

Now, Candyland…that’s a game you can rig. My kids think I’m the unluckiest woman on the planet because, for the life of me, I could never, ever, ever win a game of Candyland. I’d wind up stuck in the swamps with Lord Licorice while some kid was dancing around yelling “I WIN!”

Except that, if that game was over in ten minutes, I think I know who the real winner is.

So…I have spent about twenty years feeling guilty about:
– not hovering over the kids,
– not wanting to spend every waking moment with them,
– not looking forward to weekend volleyball tournaments
– hating the Christmas pageant (the one where you sit in a crowded hot room waiting for a three-minute glimpse of your child who refuses to sing anyway)
– randomly combining my two favorite three-word phrases: “I love you” and “Get it yourself.”

Until two things happened:

First: I read about the concept of the “good enough mother.” This was posited by Donald Winnicott, a pediatrician and psychiatrist who asserted that the mother who takes care of all an infant’s needs but then gradually pulls away over a long period of time (we’re talking years here, and he called the process ‘loosening’) produced an adult who realized he was not the center of the universe and needed to take care of himself. As the mother gradually inserted more lag time between child’s demand/need and satisfying it, the child learns more about taking care of himself. About soi-disant “perfect mothers,” he had this to say: “The good enough mother stands in contrast with the “perfect” mother who satisfies all the needs of the infant on the spot, thus preventing him/her from developing.”

And then Anna Quindlen summed it up beautifully in this Newsweek column, and all I can say is, Amen. I am not alone, and I am not lazy.

Well, I still think I’m lazy. I just had no idea that it could be a good thing.

And then the second thing that happened was I got that phone call.

My fond wish for you is that you get many such phone calls, from kids who are taking care of themselves and proud to be doing so.