Pants-Free Parenting: Lessons learned on the parenting journey

I recently celebrated my daughter's fifth birthday. A day that also marks the fifth anniversary of the day my husband and I became parents. I remember walking into the hospital feeling like I had low expectations for what was about to happen. I didn't want preconceived notions about who or what my kid was supposed to be, I just want them to be.

I was wrong. These past years have rid me of all my ideas about kids. I used to think it shouldn't be so hard to make a kid not look like they'd be dressed like a blind monkey, until my daughter turned 2 and began dressing herself. I used to think that I could at least give my children good food, none of that high-processed garbage, until my son turned 2 and all he would eat was yogurt in a tube.

I used to think that if we all worked hard enough, that we could do it all — kids, work, clean homes, happy lives. Now I realize I don't want it all. I don't want to drive myself into the ground, exhausted with no patience, only for what? To live up to some unattainable ideal of motherhood.

The longer I parent, the more I realize how necessary it is to redefine what it means to be a mother. Mothers are not selfless angels. Mothers are not cleaning and cooking robots. Mothers are not saints. Mothers are not the machine that keeps the whole family going. It might be gratifying for a mother to see herself as that, but we are not — nor should we be.

In Henrik Ibsen's play 'A Doll's House,' a husband tells his wife that she has a sacred duty to her husband and family. She replies that she has a duty more sacred, 'My duty to myself.' The line was so controversial when the play was first performed that Ibsen himself changed it.

Over 130 years later, it is still a radical idea — that mothers, before we are anything are human. Not super women capable of great feats. Just people with hopes, fears, dreams and desires. It is not ennobling for women to put mothers on a pedestal, to laud them as heroes and speak of them as the great saviors of humanity and babies and morals and virtue. It's terrifying and damaging. No human could bear up to such a task. This is why mothers fall so hard when their children do.

Lately, I've been failing. My son is scrappy and I'm pretty sure we can't go back to some restaurants in town. My daughter is forming opinions and sharing them in ways that might be less than polite. I do my best, but I still find my son bopping another kid on the head. I still hear myself yelling. I still snap. And I feel bad about those simple human normal things, because I've been given a narrative that tells me therein lies my worth.

But it doesn't. I love my children. They are the best stories I've ever written, but I am not them. And so, before I am anything else to them, I am a person.

There is a quote about parenting floating around that has been used over and over in various forms, it states: 'Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.' I only have two kids and I am pretty sure that is enough to squash all my theories and roll my eyes at headlines that tell me 'Simple Tricks that Will Help Your Child Eat Their Food.'

At some point, we all learn the same glorious lesson of parenting, there are no simple tricks in this elemental human endeavor, just poop, vomit, hugs, triumphs and tragedy. We are just humans taking care of humans for whatever that ultimately means. And whether you have children or just have parents, we're part of this mess. I hope we can be kind to one another in it.

Lyz Lenz is a writer, mother of two and hater of pants. Email her at eclenz@gmail.com or find her writing at LyzLenz.com.