Post #13 E Good Enough

Post #13 E Good Enough

Depicting Good Enough

In our pre-adoption assessment interviews, I asked the social worker contracted to assess our preparedness for adoption if I should stop taking birth control pills. That she jumped on the question with a fair degree of horror in her voice has stayed with me. “Absolutely not!” or words to that effect, for this child is going to need your undivided attention.  Whether because our 55 minutes were up or because my mind was slow to register her response, I did not ask why.

Yet Good Enough Parenting’s baseline seems to be that parenting occupies only a third of the influence on a child’s life, once the constant needs of infancy are passed. But before I get into Tronick’s ‘Rule of Thirds’ I need to back track to D. W. Winnicott who gave parents permission to slow down to ‘Good Enough’, saying that meeting a child’s needs about 30% of the time is good enough and promises the child the opportunity to grow in self-discovery and self-reliance.  Scroll down to Distilling Good Enough to check out Pip Johnson’s Good Enough Parenting.  She says, Edward Tronick: “found that imperfect attunement is consistent with healthy attachment” for parents.  Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., in Brainstorm: the power and purpose of the teenage brain (2013,52,53) defines ‘attunement’ as being interested in what is going on in the mind of another, an “essential aspect of empathy”.

Pip Johnson details Tronick’s ‘Rule of Thirds’. Contrary to images they may have of themselves, in healthy child-parent relationships, parents are “perfectly in tune with the child around a third of the time. Another third of the time, parents struggle to work out what is wrong with their child and so are unable to meet their needs. This might be when kids are angry or crying and we don’t seem to understand why, and so they must soothe themselves and recover on their own. The final third of the time, which Tronick judged to be the most important for creating healthy attachment, is when parents are not initially in tune with their children’s needs but work to become attuned. This experience provides a safe experience of distress and resolution, which promotes general resilience” demonstrating that “imperfect parenting is better for kids….”

Recently I came across two words in Azar Nafisi’s memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books (2003, 86) — “essential paradoxes”.  Paradoxes, combining seemingly contradictory features to reveal truth and coupled with the qualifier ‘essential’, are popping up like wild daisies everywhere in my meadow. Popping up like that, these little daisies make what feels to me like tectonic shifts. I know very little about tectonic shifts but if what I do know is correct, my brain, post- tectonic eruption, is settling into whole new paradigms, geologically referred to as ‘denudation’. Denudation sounds apt on the face of it.

In the realm of parenting, one of those ‘essential paradoxes’ we live with comfortably or otherwise, might be the need to de-nudify (if it is a word) or shift perspectives on Authoritarian, Neglectful, Permissive and Authoritative Parenting Styles.  On paper, the directions for parenting are printed in black and white but get a bit more smudgy in the real world, the messiness of life. Maybe just a little of each parenting style shaken together into Good Enough is good enough parenting. Perhaps we start as amazing Authoritative parents with dabbles in Neglectful and Permissive but when our child gets that teen blast of neuronal development and hormones, at times we lose control and explode into Authoritarian mode in attempts to retain control. Top all this with moments when one parent flips to the page on Permissive parenting and the other parent says, “Nope, it has to be the page on Authoritative parenting”. And then there is that crow flying over their heads as they argue, cawing, “Imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome.” (I guess the couple are outdoors playing tug of war with these pages) And arguing or not, the couple hear that irritating crow forcing unwanted thoughts about the everyday insecurities of doing parenting right, measuring themselves against the Jones next door with their picture-perfect family. (I failed Child Care 12 because while I did fine on the tests, I couldn’t knit around the corner of the baby bonnet and never thought to get my mother to do it for me like others did). Somewhere I read that if we sculk about as imposters, we cannot love ourselves, and if we cannot love ourselves, we cannot adequately love another. Groan, what does that mean and how do we measure if we love ourselves?

Adopters, seeing themselves as imposter parents, may also be harbouring a wiggly little worm drilling holes in the certainty of their right to be legitimate parents of their ‘forever’ child, however they shield themselves with what at times sounds like a desperate affirmation. In the dream I had decades earlier, I am running with this little boy I believed to be mine from pursuers determined to take him from me because, I guess in their minds, I was not the legitimate mother of this little blondie.   In adoption story after story, it is those feelings which may sometimes be closely examined or tentatively hinted at, or at other times, outright denied. You will find books by people whose adoption experience ignited in them questions that led to academic research, you will find memoirs in which people circle their experiences as they learn to cope with what Dr. Claire Weekes, in Hope and Help For Your Nerves (1969), termed ‘fear of the fear’, and you will find stories of people who wanted everyone to believe, sometimes quite aggressively, the child they adopted was fully, and only ever, their child.

Some of this insecurity is stirred up when here and there we come across stories: we read that Joanie Mitchell found the daughter she gave up at birth in favour of her career.  There was no ‘breaking news’ cast for the baby girl’s adoption, only a shroud of secrecy.  But now the world had righted itself again and we were happy to hear Joan Mitchell has found her long lost daughter. In memoir after memoir, reality show after reality show, the big news is the reunion of birth parents with an adoptee.  The adopters, while given a quick, little and hopefully reassuring hug, with the promise “You will always be ___’s ‘real’ mom and dad”, are then written out of the script.

I have been mulling this feeling of insecurity as an adopter for a long time.  My thoughts, standing before me like some security gorilla at a bar, arms crossed over a ridiculously bloated chest, have demanded I read beyond the adoption fluff books to find a checklist against which I can determine if good enough is not just the most realistic, but actually the best parenting style for our child. If we are his parents, are we good enough if he became ours through adoption and we parented him in a manner that was in tune some times, absolutely not in tune at others, but always striving to become in tune.

Because Yasik came to us just weeks before kindergarten and after school play with friends took up a good portion of each day, influencing only 30 % of his life was a given. Against that 30% opportunity, were Dave and I sometimes “perfectly in tune” with Yasik? I can only judge our attunement by the cuddles, laughter, turning to us in stress, sharing fun times that were woven into my memory and journal notes of our life with Yasik through to his teen years. Playing soccer or hide and seek with the dog, building rafts, camping and beach memories. Dragging us through low bush to show us a treasure he’d found, an old car battery. Yelling and laughing together with Dave while battling it out on the computer. Working with me to help beached salmon get on with their trip upstream. Confiding with us about a girl and wanting us to rate her as highly as he did.   In an earlier post I shared the night I dressed Yasik for bed. I didn’t have a clean set of PJs ready for him so I put him in trunks.  He started to sob into my chest. He didn’t have the language to tell me what was troubling him. Moments later Dave came in and without language was yet immediately aware that Yasik wanted a T-shirt top too.

Yasik was working on the spelling of the week and Dave, the parent preparing his young son for the future and trying to make sense of spelling drills, told him this was just the beginning.  Yasik needed to learn these words so he would be able to read and write them and go on to more and more spelling. It never stops etc.  Yasik laid his head down and wailed.

In the last minute rush to get him off to school one morning, I wanted to check that he was ready for spelling. Lost flashed a neon warning light across his face. I stopped, called him to me, held him, fighting tears and said we will go over them together. He lay against me, not holding back at all and then spelled them all well. This from a kid who was still struggling with language.  Another night Yasik and I were saying good night to ‘Dear God’. I said, “Thanks for helping Yasik with his spelling”, and he pipes in, “I got them all right God”.

Another time, Yasik brought home a note from the teacher. It said, “Yasik has been very uncooperative today”.  Dave told Yasik he would only punish him for not telling Dave what had happened, not for what Yasik had done.  Yasik asked, “Even if it was nasty?”

He went on to tell Dave that “the teacher was making me read something over and over and I just didn’t want to read it over and over. I didn’t say anything bad. I just didn’t read.”

The journal doesn’t offer Dave or my response to that day maybe because it was still so fresh in our memories how much we felt for Yasik in that situation. The journal does however note how often we felt we didn’t know what we were doing nor were we there for Yasik. We were “parents[who] struggle to work out what is wrong with their child and so are unable to meet their need”.

What strikes me about Edward Tronick’s second ‘third’ is that there is a sort of dusting off of the hands, with a ‘well that’s that. It is what it is’, no reparations possible here, justifiably or otherwise.  We could be there to read to Yasik at night and practice reading with Yasik some as homework helpers, but I was at work, not home-schooling, and Dave was at school or work. And that is actually the way life works. Child at school under the supervision of others for 3 to 7 hours each week day, parents elsewhere. The female judge in Scott Turow’s novel, The Laws of Our Fathers, {1996,66) is being pressured by her daughter to be allowed to stay home from school, but she is a busy judge starting a high-profile case so she cajoles, threatens, manipulates and promises future impossible temptation. “Someday, I always promise, it will be as she asks…. But not, of course, today. Today there is duty…. I must go off to my other world…”.

Even if we had home-schooled, our child would have been in dreamland for at least 1/3 of the 24 hours each day offers.  If he had a bad dream we might have taken him into our bed or comforted him but if he flailed about and we were needing what sleep we could scrape out of that night to meet the demands of the day to come, we may have said, “Enough now, off to your own bed”. The unexpected may have come up and we didn’t pick him up on time; he had to deal with a few scary moments of ‘Where are they?’. If he was too short for the school toilets, we weren’t there to help him figure out how best to pee.  Other times we simply made the wrong parenting choice and it was irreversible. I was country at heart, not urban, and had this fantasy that Yasik too would have a much richer life in a rural setting. Just as he finished elementary school and was about to enter middle school, we sold the first home our child had become attached to, a child who had spent his first year with unstable parents, then a year and a half in a hospital and 2 years in an orphanage before moving into a new country, new family, new friends and new routine, with the new family at his side about a third of the time.  A Google quickie says that the disruption of moving is one of the 5 major stress events in a child’s life.  The only argument Yasik could come up with to show us he was worried about moving was to remind us that this home he definitely didn’t want to leave had the attraction of being right next to a major throughfare where “We get to see accidents here.”

We moved to a new neighbourhood, one where most of the kids on the block had long established relationships.  Our adult to-do list didn’t include helping him negotiate a new social structure. Yasik’s covering with yelling and door slamming was too easily translated as another message. I write at one juncture:  Trying to stay on top of things but it feels like we never quite do. 

There was one nice plus in the move to the country, a very big hot tub. Though I have noted often enough, not only because that damn crow was relentless, but because it was actually a fact, Dave and I were aware from time to time that we were not yet ready to write a self-help on parenting. And so we conferenced at the end of the day in that relaxing tub – arguing heartily for varying positions.  Yasik’s early forays into the world of girl-boy were, as I have said before, well out of my personal experience and maybe not well-exampled by Dave’s experiences. Or were they? His mother would show up at a party and drag him out.

We were savvy enough to understand that some of what we were dealing with was transitioning to the teenage brain. Though’ Yasik had new curiosities igniting his neurons, those neurons may not yet have found the best synapse to leap over or were still in need of a few years of pruning. What do teens do with sensations of independence they don’t really understand but test out and sometimes get frustrated when the results aren’t great.  Yasik would pull out these cool words to spit at us when he was angry at some thwarting. A moment later we would see the tiniest bit of uncertainty as he watched for the results, even some surprise and definite discomfort. Oh, that didn’t go well.  Disgust sometimes when it didn’t have the desired effect – a kid working on the sensations of growing up. Our role when we could or were up to it was to handle this experimenting with care. That old hot tub witnessed more than one session with parents who dearly loved their son, who “not initially in tune” with Yasik’s needs, worked “to become attuned”.

 

Defining Good Enough

Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to underline the following characteristics you identify in the narrative.

Good Enough Parenting – an adaptation of Google’s AI generated Definition

Good enough parenting is a theory that acknowledges that parents are not perfect nor can they do everything.  It’s okay for themselves and their children to make mistakes for that is how we all learn and develop strength.

Here are some characteristics of good enough parenting:

• Responding to your children’s needs, especially in their infancy.

• Working to accept and celebrate your children, not for who you hope them to be but for who the individual each child is, here and now.
• Setting boundaries, looking for the best possible reasons for your children’s misbehavior. Providing routine care, being loving, present, and available, but not trying to give your children more than that.
• Acknowledging problems and working to solve them not assigning blame, trusting your children to figure their problem out.

The concept of good enough parenting was developed by UK psychoanalyst and pediatrician Donald Winnicott in the 1950s. Winnicott suggested that as little as 30% of the time spent meeting a child’s needs is enough to raise a happy and well-attached child.

Research has shown that over-parenting can negatively impact a child’s emotional growth and executive functioning. It can also lead to anxiety, depression, and feelings of helplessness.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/going-beyond-intelligence/202011/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-good-enough-parent

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-narrative-nurse-practitioner/202407/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-good-enough-parent

https://www.mffy.com/blog/is-good-enough-parenting-relevant-in-2022

“To Be Good Enough”    Savithiri Ratnapalan https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2654842/#__sec2title

“The Good Enough Parent Is the Best Parent,”   Peter Gray https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/freedom-to-learn/201512/the-good-enough-parent-is-the-best-parent

“What Is a Good Enough Mother?”   Marilyn Wedge https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/suffer-the-children/201605/what-is-good-enough-mother

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_enough_parent

A key function of good enough parenting is to provide the essential background to allow for the growing child’s disillusionment with the parents and the world, …

Complex PTSD: from surviving to thriving: a guide and map for recovering from childhood trauma      Pete Walker    CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013, 41

When I apply the concept of “good enough” to people, I generally mean that a person is essentially good hearted, tries to be fair, and meets his or her commitments a large portion of the time.

I also like to apply “good enough” to other concepts such as a good enough job, a good enough try, a good enough outing, a good enough day or a good enough life. I apply this concept liberally to contradict the black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking of the critic which reflexively judges people and things as defective unless they are perfect.

‘Anthem’ The Future    Leonard Cohen  1992 album

‘Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.’

Distilling Good Enough

The Not Good Enough Mother    Sharon lamb    Beacon Press, 2019, 44,45,46,55,56,66, 146, 183

This is the book that introduced me to the idea of Good Enough and it remains for me the one which stirs my mind the most.

Summary

Sharon Lamb is a psychologist and expert witness evaluating parents. She also, she makes clear early in the book as she attends an Al-Anon meeting that she attends Al-Anon meetings, not “as a therapist but as a supplicant”.  She has a son she is uncomfortable talking about around people whose children are living successful lives. She has a need to be with people who are living with troubled loved ones.

She offers definitions of good enough parenting throughout the book: “… No mother has the right food for the child all the time – God, the lunchbox items my kids tossed away. No mother always praises her child—I recall a time Willy showed me a drawing and I stared at it blankly, my mind elsewhere, until he said, “Don’t you like it?” No mother listens to her child whenever he speaks –…”

…Sometimes I think that I will die before I see that my son is okay, really okay, that my own life and my family’s lives have been ruined by drugs and by what I didn’t or couldn’t do.  When I think like that, I run, hide, space out, or watch Law and Order. But I have a counter-thought that is as soothing as the end of many episodes of Law and Order. This thought is that we are all, right now, in this moment, okay.  And I add to this comforting thought, every person, every family has some trauma to live through at some point or other in their history, whether it’s a death, a mental illness, an accident…

Lamb gets into D.W. Winnicott’s message, adding another piece about needing only to be good enough with, “The good enough mother mirrors the baby when he needs mirroring and allows him to go on being when he doesn’t.  …Then later, when she allows him his separateness, allows him to “go on being” and doesn’t intrude into that space, she gives him the opportunity to develop creative thought and to understand that even when she isn’t reflecting him, he exists. He is all right.

Mirroring produces mind-mindedness, the ability to understand what is going on in another person’s mind. …. [G]ood enough parenting depended on parents being able to understand what was in the minds of their children. 

…It is deeply unfair that mothers carry the largest load in what is surely a shared responsibility for children. Motherblame and mother guilt are social mechanisms that relieve everyone else – state, health insurance companies, schools, dads, therapists – from their responsibility. It is just such a complicated issue, the cause and effect of child development, and motherblame is an easy answer.

WINNICOTT AND PARENTING       Ingrid Masterson  HOME / INSIDE OUT / ISSUE 24: SPRING 1996 /
https://library.parenthelp.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/iahip.org_.pdf

Summary

A review of D.W. Winnnicott’s message in The Child, the Family and the Outside World taken from work with war evacuees which led him to see from the “emotional life of babies and children” that “[t]here is no such thing as a baby …”, for a very needy baby cannot be a baby outside a relationship with a caregiver, usually a mother — rather a stark observation.

As the baby continues to develop, “[r]easonable success, in the gradual introduction of the baby to a world of external reality which can meet his needs in a ‘good enough’ manner, helps him move from ‘need’ to ‘desire’”.

… Parents who can hold reality for their child, especially the reality of their own good feelings alongside their human limitations, as well as his good and bad potential, until he can take over this function, are helping him to come to terms with a world that can be sometimes gratifying, sometimes frustrating, but essentially good enough to realise some of his desires.

…The main demand of parents is that they be around long enough and be secure enough in themselves to survive emotionally ‘intact’, for the child to reach each stage at his own pace without forcing beyond his own developmental capacity.

Bad Therapy: why the kids aren’t growing up    Abigail Shrier   Sentinel, 2024

It is probably best to say of this book: Just read the book.  It is a counter-balance in very many ways.

In particular the chapter “The Road Paved by Gentle Parents” deals with parenting styles.

Why parents should stop blaming themselves for how their kids turn     Yuko Munakata PhD Jan 12, 2021  https://ideas.ted.com/why-parents-should-stop-blaming-themselves-for-how-their-kids-turn-out/   This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, a TEDxCU Talk.

This is such a good article I am tempted to leave it on the page as is but I know it belongs to Yuko Munakata so I encourage the reader to go straight to the article.

Summary

Yuko Munakata tells us that while parents want the best for their children, they do not control how their children will live out their lives. Near the end of the article, he offers Andrew Solomon’s observation on parents: “even though many of us take pride in how different we are from our parents, we are endlessly sad at how different our children are from us.” Munakata encourages us to let go of trying to control our children’s lives for endless studies show children are shaped by genes, yes, but also by environment, peers and culture. To further the point, he talks of studies that show how varied children and the lives they live are even if they are raised in the same household.

Munakata’s advice in light of these studies: “Stop blaming yourself as if you’re in control of your child’s path. You have influence — but you don’t have control”.  And stop blaming your parents for the same reason. Stop judging other parents.  As a parent of a child who was going to have a limited life said, “Parenting, I’ve come to understand, is about loving my child today. Now. In fact, for any parent anywhere, that’s all there is.”

The 4 Common Parenting Styles and Their Effects on Kids   Updated Jan. 30,2025

https://themindsjournal.com/4-common-parenting-styles/

One of the hugely overlooked truths of parenting is that parenting involves both parents and their equal contributions make up for a suitable condition that ensures an overall general development of the child. It’s a myth that the mother has a bigger role to play in raising a child. Absence of a father can have drastic effects on the emotional, social and economic well-being of the child. Therefore, both of their involvement is crucial.

Scaling Up Parenting Interventions is Critical for Attaining the Sustainable Development Goals

Matthew R. Sanders · Gauri Divan · Meghna Singhal · Karen M. T. Turner · Richard Velleman · Daniel Michelson · Vikram Patel   April 2021 / online: 4 May 2021 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10578-021-01171-0 Child Psychiatry & Human Development (2022) 53:941–952 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-021-01171-0

Summary

These authors are offering “culturally and socioeconomically diverse” research backed suggestions for how parenting support programs can improve “a wide range of developmental, emotional, behavioral and health outcomes for parents and their children”.

These are: (i) creating a safe, nurturing and engaging home environment, (ii) creating a responsive, positive learning environment, (iii) providing assertive and consistent boundaries and discipline, (iv) having reasonable expectations of children and oneself as a parent, and (v) having the capacity for self-care in the parenting role.

Acting on these suggestions – the features of Good Enough Parenting – promises to lead to “positive family relationships skills, healthy relationships with peers and significant others, good language and communication skills, intellectual skills, emotional and behavioural self-regulation, independence and self-care skills, compassion, healthy habits, environmental responsibility, cultural connection” (some paraphrasing here).

Retired elementary school teacher shares biggest parenting mistake she saw during long career   Emily Shiffer 01.24.25   https://www.upworthy.com/retired-elementary-school-teacher-shares-biggest-parenting-mistake-she-saw-during-long-career

Summary

Elementary teachers qualify to offer their opinions on parenting because they spend lots of time with kids and their parents. So TikToker @elenanico22 “interviewed her mom Lisa, a retired elementary school teacher, in an advice video. She asked her mom to share her insights on the question: “What’s one thing you saw people messing up with their kids?”’

The mother and elementary teacher’s “response was simple: “They didn’t enjoy them.” ….  They wanted them to be something that – most of us aren’t exactly what other people want us to be — so enjoy the kid you have.” Others who work with children agreed: “This is so true. I work in childcare and lots of parents literally cannot stand their kids…”

Why good-enough parenting needs to be a movement   Crysta Balis June 2021. Updated Mar 17, 2023  https://www.todaysparent.com/family/parenting/good-enough-parenting/.

Summary

Crysta Balis writes of her relief in finding British paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s research as the pressure to become a perfect parent became untenable.  Starting from the recognition “that adapting and readapting to a child’s ever-evolving needs for attention versus independence is no easy feat”, Winnicott affirmed that “perfect isn’t possible, nor is it the goal”. When the ‘good enough’ mother (hopefully he meant the father as well) in their love for their children ‘fail’ “to adapt to every need of the child [the parents help] them adapt to external realities. [Their] imperfections better prepare [the children] for an imperfect world.”

Balis also presents Edward Tronick’s ‘Rule of Thirds’: “parents are actually fully attuned to, or “in sync” with, their infants’ emotional needs only about 20 to 30 percent of the time. Another third of the time, parents are out of sync and drop the ball entirely, like when they just can’t figure out why their child is crying or angry, or when that child manages to console themselves despite the parent’s failed attempts or exasperation”, and “the final one, when, through trial and error, we manage to troubleshoot our way back to being in sync with our kids”.  Added to these studies, a 2018 Harvard study “shows that kids with working moms might actually benefit more in the long run, despite spending less time with their moms overall”. Bottom of Form

Good Enough Parenting      Pip Johnson, Clinical Psychology Registrar August 6, 2021 https://forestpsychology.com.au/good-enough-parenting/

As well as summarizing D Winnicott’s contribution to parenting styles, Pip Johnson offers a look at Edward Tronick, “famous for the ‘stillface’ experiments” who “found that imperfect attunement is consistent with healthy attachment” for parents.  Contrary to images they may have of themselves, in healthy child-parent relationships, parents are “perfectly in tune with the child around a third of the time. Another third of the time, parents struggle to work out what is wrong with their child and so are unable to meet their needs. This might be when kids are angry or crying and we don’t seem to understand why, and so they must soothe themselves and recover on their own. The final third of the time, which Tronick judged to be the most important for creating healthy attachment, is when parents are not initially in tune with their children’s needs but work to become attuned. This experience provides a safe experience of distress and resolution, which promotes general resilience”.

All this to say once again that “imperfect parenting is better for kids…. The point of Winnicott and Tronick’s work isn’t that we should not try so hard (though for some that may be true). The point is that we should look after ourselves and be kind to ourselves when we fail”.

ADVANCED PARENTING: advice for helping kids through diagnoses, differences, and mental health challenges    Kelly Fradin, MD    Balance, 2023, 20, 104

While Kelly Fradin wants you to know that you are “ultimately responsible when something goes wrong”, she points us to the Pareto principle, eighty–twenty rule, that the 20 % we do accounts for 80% of the outcome. So later in the book she assures us that “You can be a good parent even if you do not take every opportunity to do more”.

The Good Enough Mother Aiming to be the “perfect” can cause problems for both you and your child   Alexandra Sacks May 2018 https://medium.com/@alexandrasacks/the-good-enough-mother-ab19fd7dad06.

Summary

Not to pick on this article for it is simply the next one in my summarizing line-up. But once again it becomes evident to me that so far the majority of the articles are mother-focused.  Some might respond with “Duh, the phrase ‘Good Enough’ most often is accompanied by the designation, ‘mother’. Still … kids have fathers too.

The article begins with reference to D.W. Winnicott’s taking the pressure off mothers, noting that the phrase ‘good enough mother’ has been around since 1953 but my guess is that might be a surprise to a fair few mothers. Alexandra Sacks addresses the possible mother guilt of only being ‘good enough’ for what might seem to some mothers/parents like excuse-making.

She counters this false, often self-generated guilt by stating the obvious but too often so obvious as to be no longer noticed: we are humans. The word should go straight to that place in our brains that reminds us that being human is so all encompassing that perfection hasn’t a chance to get off the ground.

Certainly, your children aren’t usually judging your parenting and even if and when they do, Sacks reminds parents that “Self care is not selfish — it’s simply a requirement for psychological (and physical) survival”, essential to being a good enough parent, let alone a perfect one. Meanwhile the children the parent believes are being failed by failing parents, have a front row to seat to watch how to cope in difficulties and then have a great opportunity to go off and practice how to take care of their own needs when parents aren’t there for them.

The Abandoners: on mothers and monsters   Begoña Gómez Urzaiz     W.W. Norton & Company,2022, 62-76, 126-134

This entire book asks readers to relook at our perspectives on parenting and mothering. Well worth the demand to examine our deeply embedded ideas.

The chapter “An Ogre, a Princess, an Ass: mothers who leave in Meryl Streep’s Career” discusses views of mothers portrayed by Streep’s characters, particularly mothers who leave or in some way fail their children in the view of society at differing times, for they are always expected to offer personal renunciation as they are “always something different” from fathers.

In a chapter called “Momfluencers and the Economy of Turbomotherhood” Gómez Urzaiz talks of one mother and father caught up in the possibilities of online influencing and looking for an additional edge perhaps or perhaps out of sincere desire decide to showcase their ‘journey’ of adopting from a transnational/transracial option.  In the end they become a showcase of ‘rehoming’ an adoptee they are unable to care for.

Cry When the Baby Cries by Becky Barnicoat review – the black and white truth about motherhood   Rachel Cooke  Mon 10 Mar 2025 09.00 GMT  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/mar/10/cry-when-the-baby-cries-by-becky-barnicoat-review-the-black-and-white-truth-about-motherhood

Barnicoat’s memoir of early parenthood is funny, unflinching and a welcome corrective to the ceaseless pressures new mums face from social media.

What Does It Mean to Be a Good Enough Parent?   Reviewed by Abigail Fagan July 16, 2024  https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-narrative-nurse-practitioner/202407/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-good-enough-parent

Summary

I am quoting a fair bit here for the specific detail is helpful. Abigail Fagan, being mother of two children came to realize that “… after my second-born, I realized my girls were simply different. Their behavior had little to do with me, but instead with who they were”.

… Researchers Beatrice Beebe (a long-time mother-infant expert) and Susan Woodhouse (a parenting and infant researcher) independently found responding to infants about half the time seems to be ideal. This is the “Optimum Midrange,” according to Beebe. She found babies in relationships with caregivers in this midrange of responsiveness actually became more resilient than babies of caregivers who didn’t respond—or responded too much. Babies use time without a caregiver’s involvement to learn self-regulation, which offers an essential skill for resiliency.

To Woodhouse, a good caregiver provides a secure base… A mother needn’t respond all the time, but when the baby is in most distress. This way, a child learns they can engage and count on a parent when truly needed, which promotes secure attachment.

The 4 Common Parenting Styles and Their Effects on Kids   Shreyasi Debnath Updated: February 20, 2025  https://themindsjournal.com/4-common-parenting-styles/

Now, the question is which one parenting style do I follow for my child? … What parenting styles one will follow highly depends on the cultural and economic background, your status as a parent – if you’re a single parent, working parent, has health issues etc. … None of the parenting styles is fruitful when used independently. … Align their needs with your capabilities. Be attuned with your child’s development.

Why parents shouldn’t always be ‘in sync’ with their children   Pascal Vrticka    27 May 2024 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240524-why-neural-synchrony-between-parents-and-children-isnt-always-ideal

Summary

Research has shown that secure attachment between parents and their children involves “the coordination of parents’ and children’s brains and behaviour during social interactions”. Considering that in reality parents and children are not, nor can feasibly be, in constant ‘sync’, perhaps it is best not to make that a priority for it can add unneeded stress on the parent-child relationship and impede the child’s need to develop self-reliance.  “What really counts is that the parent-child relationship functions well overall”.

Development and Validation of Parenting Style Scale      S. Batool, Afia N. Mumtaz 2015   https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Development-and-Validation-of-Parenting-Style-Scale-Batool Mumtaz/f95465dd5e09beafbf3c04cc4b4df09a26d14be4

This article provides data on a study of the efficacy of the major parenting styles, considering the following areas contributing to an understanding of parenting styles.

‎ Others would like to make sure the list notes: parents’ and child’s experience of parenting, the level of attachment between them, the beliefs, values, knowledge, cultural influence,

biological/genetic influences, knowledge, the characteristics of the parents and the child: temperaments, disabilities, exposure to trauma-ACE, self-regulation, and mental health. And likely this is still an incomplete list.

Baby We Were Meant for Each Other: in praise of adoption    Scott Simon    Random House, 2010, 53, 54, 57, 167

Children without homes don’t need just people who are willing to love them. They need parents. Parents aren’t simply good-hearted people who swoop in with hugs, candy, and promises. They are people who astonish even themselves how gladly and rapidly they put their children at the center of their lives.  Parents don’t altogether stop trying to be cool, staying up late, or telling naughty jokes. But with their first cries, children call us to be less selfish and more humble (even humiliated).  They give us a living stake in the world beyond our own short lives…. Parents are the kind of people who are enthralled and fascinated, even as they are often exhausted and appalled, by the challenges and vexations of children…. The best we could do for each kid is to help them to learn from their own bumps and bruises, and all the shots life is going to throw at them….”

One young fellow adopted as a teenager says of his adoptative parents: “They were parents, … Someone to give you not only unconditional love, but regular meals. Someone to take you to the doctor and dentist. A reason to come home…”

The 5 principles of parenting: your essential guide to raising good humans    Dr. Aliza Pressman    Simon Element, 2024, xix-xx, 64, 128

Summary

Dr. Aliza Pressman makes her agenda clear in the Introduction by saying that we need only to respond to our child’s needs 50% of the time, BUT on the very same page she states her list of non-negotiables:

• Take care of the mental health of the primary caregiver.
• Do not engage in physical or emotional abuse.
• Commit to habits of consistent sleep, movement, and nourishment.
• Establish clear Rules that enable emotional and physical safety.
• Be sensitive … to your child’s needs (which are not the same thing as their “wants”).

The heading on the next page is Remember That Good Enough Is Good Enough.

Pressman moves through the book with advice to guide your parenting. She also provides a piece I have never yet encountered: three periods of great neuroplasticity take place in our development- first, in our first years of life, second, in our teen years and third, in the years we become engaged in care-giving, in whatever capacity, not just in parenting.  A bonus I would think to parenting.

And here she finds a plus for failure in parenting: The more our kids get to see us making mistakes and learning from them, the more they’ll come to understand that life isn’t about getting things right the first time.  Disappointment is natural, but taking the fear out of failing means remembering that imperfect people are worthy of love.

Am I a “Good Enough” Parent?    Dr. Jack Stoltzfus  September 5, 2023 https://parentslettinggo.com/am-i-a-good-enough-parent/

Summary

Dr. Jack Stoltzfus calls parenting “one big guilt trip” citing a study noting that “only 3% of parents thought they were excellent parents”. In his 2024 book, he offers parents a chance to grade themselves with a report card, checking for how they accept what they can’t control, letting go where needed, what their motivations are and are they consistent with their values, do they help their child and are they unconditional and invested in their love and understanding of their children, apologizing when needed. For those aspects that fall below what their values see as acceptable, do they have an improvement plan?

Good enough parenting for all children—a strategy for a healthier society    Jun 23, 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/adc.78.4.293

I am not sure how I gained access to this article for the site says it must be purchased. I will therefore not summarize it except to say that it looks at issues of children’s negative life experiences, seeking the ‘why’ for a healthier society in regards to good enough parenting within the concept of ‘it takes a village’, especially in the years from infancy to ten. The need for love, care and healthy guidance are basic, without which a child becomes at risk for problems.

The Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development by Farrington and West “found that one of the best predictors of later delinquency was the teacher’s assessment of “troublesomeness” at the age of 8–l0 years”, further showing evidence that “four other factors were found to be strongly and independently associated with future delinquency: (i) poor parenting; (ii) economic deprivation; (iii) family criminality; and (iv) educational failure”.

Thinking Critically about Child Development: examining myths & misunderstanding, 3^rd ed.   Jean Mercer    SAGE Publications, 2016, 273       

“…it is hard to know whether the children’s development was determined by the parenting behavior or by one or more related factors”.

Great Myths of Child Development    Stephen Hupp and Jeremy Jewell    Wiley-Blackwell, 2015

#31 Parents can usually tell when their child is depressed:   Although most parents may feel they’re “in tune” with their child’s emotional state, this may not always be the case.  In dozens of studies over the last several decades, research has shown that parents are fairly poor informants when it comes to identifying depression in their children…. Interestingly, researchers have found that parents are better informants when their children have disruptive behavior problems (e.g. aggression) as opposed to problems with their mood (e.g. anxiety and depression).

#34 Adults can usually tell if a child is lying: … Studies show that adults are not very good at determining whether or not children are telling the truth.

#40 If you “spare the rod” you will “spoil the child”:   A more modern translation of this biblical reference suggests the rod is more likely referring to a staff shepherds use to guide sheep and that the verse itself is saying, “If you refuse to discipline your children, it proves you don’t love them” or “Those who don’t correct their children hate them …”  The writers then summarize current opinion on the rightness or wrongness of spanking, concluding with … although spanking may be an effective strategy to gain immediate compliance in some case, it may not always be the most effective strategy, it’s related to lower moral internalization in the long term, and it may have unintended negative side effects for the child. …. “[We] also believe that a few occasions of mild spanking will not likely cause harm to a child, and parents shouldn’t be made to feel guilty for using mild spanking as an occasional discipline tactic.  If parents do decide to use an occasional spanking, they should also realize that, at best, the spanking teaches children “what not to do,” so they will also need to think but teaching the child “what to do,” instead, by using some additional approach.

Born for Love: why empathy is essential and endangered    Maia Szalavitz and Bruce D. Perry, M.D., PhD.    William Morrow, 2010, 41

“When parents feel blamed, they are less able to empathize with their children’s [problems] and may respond defensively, instead of changing their behavior.”

Listening Well: bringing stories of hope to life     Heather Morris     St Martin’s Press, 2022

Some helpful advice is offered in developing the art of listening to yourself and others.

Eve: how the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution    Cat Bohannon    Alfed A. Knopf, 2023, 204-205

[Because human babies are needy for much longer than other creatures], in order for hominins to flourish, some kind of cultural revolution around child care must have occurred. How else, after all, would species with such needy babies survive? …. [Some] say we came up with kinfolk eusociality – a kind of furry “spinster aunt”.  Maybe we even started alloparenting, as we still do now, with unrelated folk helping care for others’ babies.

Hunt, Gather, Parent: what ancient cultures can teach us about the lost art of raising happy, helpful little humans   Michaeleen Doucleff, PhD.    Avid Reader Press, 2022, 278-287

Michaeleen Doucleff provides a good section on allo-parenting: “any person…who helps to take care of a child….key people who work alongside the mother and father, connecting to form a steady stream of unconditional love as a child grows”. Seeking to cultivate a culture of allo-parenting moves away from the isolating primacy of the nuclear family culture.

Act Natural: a cultural history of misadventures in parenting    Jennifer Traig   Ecco, 2019, 105,218,286,287

Jennifer Traig provides a window on the history of parenting and a self-deprecating willingness to let the reader look through the window into her own parenting.

“There are so many ways to get it wrong and we are just getting started….”  “Parenting is so hard and we are all looking for permission to slack off in some areas”.… “I’m now generally a capable parent, at least when I choose to be…. Though we have been worrying about it for less than a hundred years, we’ve somehow managed to keep the species going without giving it much thought”. 

And though she generally parents the way she was parented, she is “still making parenting mistakes everyday.  I am pretty sure that’s okay. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that barring the really awful stuff, things mostly turn out fine, and the ones that don’t were beyond our control anyway”. 

“In a sense, all parenting is a history of parenting. We do what our parents did because that’s what we know; or sometimes we do what they didn’t do, because now we know better”.

The Trouble with Perfect: how parents can avoid the over-achievement trap and still raise successful children   Elizabeth Guthrie, M.D. and Kathy Matthews   Hardcopy – Harmony, 2002;   audio –  Prince Frederick Recorded Books, 2008

It is my opinion that if you want a spectrum on the idea of ‘good enough’ you might weave your way through Act Natural and The Trouble With Perfect to a parenting path that works for you.

Elizabeth Guthrie and Kathy Matthews advise parents to keep from wanting to control their child’s life, however irrelevantly; instead, get a job to burn of some of the need to control energy and maybe to shake off the “could cloud” that hangs over their guilt susceptible hearts and minds.  And she suggests parents take a good look at what the short and long term consequences are when they control OR when they allow the child to control.

In Search of Stones: a pilgrimage of faith, reason and discovery    M. Scott Peck, Hyperion, 1995, 149, 151,152,159

Speaking of his own parenting, M. Scott Peck is very clear that, psychotherapist aside, he and his wife “did not know at all what it would be like to be parents”…. But they were “glad for the learning”. Scott says, “If you seriously want to learn about life, having and raising children is probably the single best way” …. He says he was not sure “how fully I could have joined in the human race…without being a father struggling to fulfill at least the minimum responsibilities of parenthood”. And in the spirt of good enough, Scott firmly states: “Parents should not be the center of their children’s lives”.

“We need to reassert a healthy masculinity”  “We need to reassert a healthy masculinity” Jonathan Keeperman and Michael Shellenberger Feb. 17, 2025 https://www.public.news/p/jonathan-keeperman-we-need-to-reassert

Summary

While this is an article in response to the anger against President Trump concerning a perceived lack of empathy and kindness, there are points here to consider regarding good enough parenting.  Others suggest the empathy and caring practices Trump appears to be dismantling seemed to enable rather that reduce the problems of the homeless etc.

A similar story can be told about many other social problems. Psychologists, including Jonathan Haidt, have found that coddling children results in them being discouraged more easily when they encounter problems…. In fact, argues … Jonathan Keeperman, … there has been a “remarkable overcorrection of the last two generations toward social norms centering feminine needs and feminine methods for controlling, directing, and modeling behavior” …. “The most important feature of the Longhouse [the metaphor of the indigenous Longhouse], and why it makes such a resonant (and controversial) symbol of our current circumstances, is the ubiquitous rule of the Den Mother,” he writes…. Keeperman … is not saying that women are bad or that feminine values of empathy, caring, and compassion are worse than masculine values of assertiveness, aggression, and action. Rather, he argues that Western cultures have become unbalanced toward feminine values…. Without feminine values, our societies would be far harsher and crueler places, but we also need healthy masculinity.… the best approach is often tough love, since that’s what allows people, and nations, to mobilize their internal resources and fortitude to mature and develop.

Ivy League psychologist shares the common mistake she made raising her 3 kids: ‘I wish I had never been that parent’      Tom Huddleston Jr.   Oct 19 2024  https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/19/ivy-league-parenting-expert-on-how-to-handle-yelling-at-kids.html

There’s no such thing as a perfect parent, says Tovah Klein, director of the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development.

“Fortunately, making mistakes and owning up to them is one way that parents can actually help teach their kids how to become healthy, successful adults”.  Klien includes herself, admitting she too has yelled at her kids. The thing is she admitted it and apologized to her children, saying something like, “I’m sorry I yelled,” or, “I apologize. I shouldn’t have done that”, thereby modelling the kind of realistic and healthy behaviour children need to see.

What You Can Change … and What You Can’t*: the complete guide to successful self-improvement    Martin E.P. Seligman, PhD.    Vintage Books, 2007, 211, 243

All the usual predictors offering a good life to a child, do not always produce that success: good mothering, high childhood experience, not coming from a multiproblem family, high IQ, good education…. Like the title says, Marting Seligman tells us that the ‘why’ of human behaviour may not yet be well understood, but when there are problems with behavior we do know that we can make changes. “So even if why we are what we are is a mystery, how to change ourselves is not.”

Despite good parenting, some kids go bad – it may be genetic: research on chemical in brain adds to nature-nurture debate  Melissa Healy   Vancouver Sun,  October 6, 2011, B4

The article asks: why do some kids with bad parents turn out fine and some kids with good parents, turn out not so nice? The answer offered: “The answer may lie in the genes. Specifically, the almost famous 5-HTTLPR serotonin transporter-promoter gene, which governs the activity of the mood chemical serotonin in the brain”. The upshot suggested: while four out of five kids are “impervious to the quality of the parenting they get”, that one of the five kids who was born with a variant may turn out sensitive to the impact of the parenting. Being careful though, the article warns us not to dismiss the environment/setting for this set in parenting.

Scientific Parenting: what science reveals about parental influence   Dr. Nicole Letourneau with Justin Joschko    Dundern, 2013, 182, 226, 236

Here’s some encouragement.

“Therefore, it should come as no surprise that when we engage in something as evolutionarily beneficial as motherhood our brains praise our noble behaviour with a burst of mood-enhancing hormones. Oxytocin is one of them. Dopamine is another”.

“You are going to get a lot of help [parenting your child]. Not from professionals or parenting experts, but from your child”.

“But what do we mean when we say support? What is it that successful parents provide to their children? Is it attention? Encouragement? Discipline? Education? To a certain extent, yes. But what really matters is relationships. Children need to forge tangible emotional connections to their adult caregivers.”

And as for D.W. Winnicott’s statement that ‘there is no such thing as a baby without someone else’, Letourneau and Joschko say Winnnicott “means that babies do not become distinct individuals immediately after birth. They wade into personhood gradually, buoyed by the calm and protective waters of family”.

Hold on to Your Kids: why parents need to matter more than peers    Gordon Neufeld, PhD. and Gabor Maté, M.D.   Vintage Canada, 2004, 54, 215

Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté, tell us “It takes three ingredients to make parenting work: a dependent being in need of being taken care of, an adult willing to assume responsibility, and a good working attachment from the child to the adult”.

“…Parenting is above all a relationship, and relationships don’t lend themselves to strategies… We do not require skills or strategies but compassion, principles, and insight. The rest will come naturally – although I’m not saying it will come easily…. [W]e may have to struggle with feelings of futility.  Very few parents come ready-made. Parents are begotten out of attachment and adaptation…. We must, however, let ourselves feel the sadness and disappointment when we have a sense of failure”.

The Myth of Normal: trauma, illness & healing in a toxic culture   Gabor Maté,    Knopf Canada, 2022, 179,180

Gabor Maté continues the message of Hold On to Your Kids with a quote from James Gabarino from 1995: “We need to put aside blaming parents and take a good hard look at the challenge of raising children in a socially toxic environment”. For as I noted in earlier posts, Gabor Maté reminds us that “Yes, parents are responsible for their children; no, they did not create the world in which they must parent them.”

A Good Enough Mother: a novel     Bev Thomas   Pamela Dorman Books, 2019, 119

When one character, at hearing the suggestion to consider the idea of D.W. Winnicott’s ‘good enough’ as an approach to consider, groans, “Sounds like a way of letting yourself off the hook if you mess up. An excuse for mediocrity”. [The narrator, a psychotherapist] shook [her] head. “It‘s become oversimplified. The original meaning’s got lost. It’s about the fact that maternal limitations play an essential role in separation and the child’s developmental process.”

In Search of the “Good Enough” Mother: how to honor the complexity of motherhood  Jennifer L. Kunst, Ph.D.,  May 9, 2012  https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/headshrinkers-guide-the-galaxy/201205/in-search-the-good-enough-mother

Summary

Jennifer Kunst begins by drawing our attention to how far from reality Mother’s Day cards are which is why D.W. Winnicott “came to believe that the way to be a good mother is to be a good enough mother” because a caring mother “provides a holding environment” * and “[w]hen she fails, she tries again”.

Kunst goes on to affirm that “[i]t takes an imperfect mother to raise a child well. You see, children need to learn about life through real experiences”.  * ‘a holding environment’ is a Winnicott term

Unbroken Brain: a revolutionary new way of understanding addiction    Maia Szalavitz    St. Martin’s Press, 2016, 165-166

Talking about a similarity between parenting and addiction, Maia Szalavitz offers three comparisons: “Even normal parenting, for example, involves a touch of OCD. Parents notoriously become obsessed with the safety of their children and ways of protecting them” …. “Another crucial aspect of learning in early parenthood, of course, is learning to bond with your particular baby.  Contrary to popular belief, parental love is not always “instant” …. But just like in addiction, it takes repeated exposure and repeated engagement …nothing is actually “instantly addictive” …. And babies, thankfully, come equipped with features that make them addictive to adults…The fact that addictions can be built on the same system is not an insult to parents or to the meaning of love – but a testament to their strength and power”. 

Old-School Traditions Modern Families Are Leaving Behind    Zayda Slabbekoorn Dec 23, 2024  https://www.yourtango.com/family/old-school-traditions-modern-families-are-leaving-behind

Summary

Each of us must make our own decisions of how many of these traditions apply today, how much is mythology, how many add value to our family’s life, and how many have actually been left behind and why.

We are apparently relegating the following to the dustbin “to save time, money, and space”: bedtime stories, heirlooms, photo albums, ‘family style’ dinners, cards and non-digital letters, family time without technology, family recipes.

According to research … the average American family only spends around 6 hours of time together weekly, compared to an average of between 12 and 20 hours in the 1990s.

Yet, usually due to financial issues, “surveys from the Pew Research Center have reported…. More than 88% of young adults aged 18 to 29-years-old are still living with a parent today, compared to an average one-third in the 1990s”.

‘Lighthouse Parents’ Have More Confident Children And Here’s How To Be One 

 Trine Jensen  https://everymum.ie/my-family/lighthouse-parents-have-more-confident-children-and-heres-how-to-be-one/

Summary

Because parents “…all want to raise confident children,” Trine Jensen, thinks it best to leave her children to figure things out for themselves rather than “micromanaging” their lives, saying, “Sometimes the best thing parents can do is to do nothing at all”.  Jensen turns to “an essay for The Atlantic, parent and educator Russel Shaw”.  

Shaw says, “Too often, I watch parents over-functioning – depriving their kids of the confidence that comes from struggling and persevering, and exhausting themselves in the process”, leaving the child to wonder if he or she might be incapable of taking care of him- or herself.

Shaw encourages parents to step back more and more as the children mature, instead learning to be there as a listener, guide and support but leaving the children to it.

Helicopter? Free-range? Concierge? What kind of parent are you?: How do you parent? There’s a meme for that amid the modern obsession with dissecting and defining parenting styles   The Irish Times DAC Jul 18, 2023 https://www.proquest.com/central/docview/2838432152/3D22720E0AA34700PQ/10?accountid=48753&sourcetype=Newspapers

Summary

The writer of this article seems a bit boggled by the plethora of labels in parenting styles that have been spawned from the original three- authoritarian, authoritative and permissive and the later added, neglectful parenting.

But for whatever style we choose to align with in our parenting, “ultimately, [O’Malley] believes, we revert to ourselves”. Furthermore, and I think this is a needed balloon buster, to the parenting style we chose for child number one, O’Malley says, ‘“Then you think you’ve got it sussed – until the second arrives and you realise everything you knew is wrong.” With the rise in one-child families, those parents can propagate the idea that a certain type of parenting works, she says, because in their case the fallacy of that will never be put to the test.”’  O’Malley goes further: ‘”We have really undermined our instinctive parenting,” she argues. As a result, “there is a vibe of cluelessness … and a general culture of denigrating parents that we all collude in”. In tandem with that undermining has come greater demands for parental responsibility.”’

And then the article ends with ‘Good Enough’ parenting, noting that 70 years after Donald Winnicott provided the label, this style still makes sense for “most children basically just need well-intentioned, half-competent parents who show them wholehearted love”.

FAFO parenting is the trendy way to let kids ‘find out’ consequences. But is it cruel to let them fail?   Natalie Stechyson  February 21, 2025

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7462555?utm_source=snews&utm_medium=referral

FAFO stands for ‘fool around and find out’ … except it’s the other F-word…with the idea that the approach teaches kids natural consequences to their actions…. as a counterpoint to some of the more modern parenting styles, like the constantly hovering helicopter parents, or gentle parenting, the extremely popular modern style that centres on acknowledging a child’s feelings and the motivations behind challenging behaviours…. [FAFO] also aligns with the trendy “let them” theory of parenting.

the good mother myth: redefining motherhood to fit reality    ed. by Avital Norman Nathman     Seal Press, 2014,34, 35  “The Unapologetic No”    Soraya Chemaly

I fast became the quintessential not-only-can-you-have-it-all-but-also-you-must-have-it-all mother…. I spent years grappling with the expectation that I would just do – mother, work, food, volunteer, more mothering, more work, more food, more volunteering. And that there was no compensation other than the idea that somewhere, somehow, there would be a tacit seal of “good mother” approval.  

The Attachment Effect: exploring the powerful ways our earliest bond shapes our relationships and lives   Peter Lovenheim    TarcherPerigee, 2018, 112,115, 119

Summary                

Peter Lovenheim tells a story of a mother who is considered to be successfully securing attachment with her child through her parenting. Yet, she says, “I fail at [attachment parenting] on a daily basis,”. Fail how?  [Lovenheim] asked. “I have days when I get frustrated,” she said, “and react to Wyatt in a way that I look back on later and say, “Well, that really wasn’t great.’ I mean there’s so little time and only so much you can do. I have to make dinner, do laundry, go to class, clean house.” Yet she considers the idea of good enough parenting half-assed.

But… she is not against babysitters or daycare. She knows “many experts…seem confident that daycare for toddlers and older children can be okay – even beneficial in promoting development- as long as workers are of high quality…” etc.

How to Raise an Adult: break free of the over parenting trap and prepare your kid for success    Julie Lythcott-Haims    Pan Macmillan UK, 2015, 20

Our kids see the strain we’re under. Researcher Ellen Galinsky asked one thousand kids what they would most like to change about their parents’ schedules. “Few of them wanted more face time; the top wish was for mom and dad to be less tired and stressed.”

Adult children who had ‘good parents’ share what their parents did right   Annie Reneau

12.19.24  https://www.upworthy.com/adult-children-of-good-parents-share-what-they-did-right-current-parents-take-note

What well-raised adult children say their parents did right: “supported their kids’ interests without judgment, explained themselves to their kids, were fair-minded and taught fair-mindedness, taught by their own example, broke cycles of dysfunction, yet certainly weren’t perfect”. (abbreviated quoting)

The Gift of the Good Enough Mother

https://seleni.org/advice-support/2018/3/14/the-gift-of-the-good-enough-mother

Our kids need us to fail sometimes. Perfection is not an option.

‘Good enough’ parenting: Negotiating standards and stigma  kylie valentine, Ciara Smyth, Jamee Newland  June 2019,  International Journal of Drug Policy Volume 68, 117-123  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S095539591830197X https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2018.07.009

Summary

This article may address some of the issues at the heart of my personal search.

Here are relevant pieces taken from the article: Policy concern with families has led to the framing of ‘good parenting’ as a skill set that parents must acquire while ‘poor parenting’ is linked to a raft of social problems, including child maltreatment.

Becoming a parent involves new emotions and challenges, among them apparently near-universal feelings of anxiety and guilt. These emotions are especially true for mothers, where decisions around paid employment are freighted with guilt regardless of the outcome: for example, working mothers feel guilty for not spending enough time with their children, and conversely stay-at-home mothers for not earning additional income which could provide their children with more opportunities (Liss et al., 2012).

Impostor Syndrome and Parenting – What Is It and How to Overcome It –
YaeBin Kim, Heidi Peter Meier https://naes.agnt.unr.edu/PMS/Pubs/2023-5185.pdf

Summary

Impostor Syndrome and Parenting Impostor syndrome, also known as impostor
phenomenon or impostorism, involves feeling like a fraud despite one’s achievements and
worry someone will find out about it. It can cause feelings of anxiety and affect relationships…According to studies, 70% of adults experience imposter syndrome at least once in their life…

Causes of Impostor Syndrome:
“… personality traits, culture, family background and parenting style” … and confusing societal messages of praise or shame. Postpartum symptoms or quickly becoming aware of how little, in the reality of parenting, that you actually know about parenting or having too high parenting expectations contribute.

Symptoms of Parents’ Impostor Syndrome: Rigidity in daily routines, Black-and-white thinking,
Catastrophic thinking, Lack of sleep, Thinking too much about mistakes, Minimizing accomplishments, Negative self-talk

Some generate within themselves the impostor syndrome by judging themselves by the research they compulsively seek out, or by trying to be all things to all beings, or striving for perfection, or insisting on going it alone. The parent labelling his or herself an imposter is advised to talk with others, adjust expectations and stop comparing.

The Experience of Motherhood Imposter Syndrome and How to Overcome It   DECEMBER 14, 2020 https://theeverymom.com/imposter-syndrome-as-a-mom-how-to-overcome-it/

If you’re unfamiliar with imposter syndrome, it was originally identified in 1978 by psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzane Imes and is the internalized feeling that your success is due to luck. Imposter syndrome can be experienced with feelings of doubt in your skills, talents, and/or accomplishments, with a fear that at any moment you might be exposed as a fraud.

Apparently, so many mothers experience this that it’s referred to as motherhood imposter syndrome or even as Psychology Today called it, “Momposter Syndrome.” And if you’ve ever questioned your parenting ability, you’re not the only one.

When putting all your supposed learnings into practice, you might realize that nothing can actually prepare you for the real thing. And when all your tricks seem to fail, the feelings of not being up for the job as a mom can creep in…. Take comfort knowing we’re all learning as we go.

Nothing but the Truth: a memoir    Marie Henein    print Penguin Random House audiobook McClelland & Stewart, 2021, 75, 232, 236

If you have developed imposter syndrome, this is a book you will find pragmatically helpful.

Marie Henein is “recognized as one of the Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers by Canadian Lawyer”.  Of her mother, she says: [My mother] Evelyn wasn’t the mushy bake-you-cookies-and-read-a bedtime story kind of mom. I didn’t know moms like that when I was growing up, and if she had been that kind of mother, I would not have been who I am. Yes I have taken this out of the context Marie Henein was focusing on, her mother’s sense of her personal strength as a human being, but I think it also speaks to the ‘good enough’ mother conflict.  Near the end of the book, Henein speaks further to this conflict of women being questioned if they are both careerists and mothers.

Henein is often asked, “How do you balance work and family?”  [Her] answer is always the same: You do not. Because there is only one of you and you can only be in one place at one time. When you are at work, that is where your attention is, and sometimes your family suffers as a result. At times, it is your family that requires all of you, and your work must take a back seat. Maybe your partner or someone else has to lend a help hand so you can have the freedom – so you can be liberated from the delusion that it is possible to create and sustain this balance…”

If You Did These 10 Things, You Were A Better Parent Than Your Kids Give You Credit For:

There’s no such thing as a “perfect” parenting, there’s only trying your best, taking accountability, and making sacrifices. Zayda Slabbekoorn  Nov 06, 2024 https://www.yourtango.com/family/you-were-better-parent-kids-give-credit-for

When your children feel free to drag their toys out of their rooms to play in the living room, when they demonstrate independence, when you can talk with your kids and they feel they can talk with you because you are open about your own mistakes and when you want to know what made them laugh in their day rather than asking them to account for how they did at school you were good enough. When you see them as human beings whom you are committed to loving, understanding and supporting, when you can agree to disagree yet they still come to visit and may even ask for help, you have been good enough.

Parents Under the Influence: words of wisdom from a former bad mother   Cecile David-Weill     Other Press, 2020, 120

In a section titled,” The best parents are straightforward with their children”, Cecile David-Weill has found that “[e]xchanges in which we are being up front with our children give them a real chance to live a true and authentic bond with us, and to understand that fundamentally, life and love are about carrying on together amid the details and hardships of reality.

“Why is Dad so Mad: a father dares to explore his rage”    Daniel Engber The Atlantic    July/August, 2022, 87-89

Summary

Daniel Engber is reviewing Keith Gessen’s book, Raising Raffi: the first five years.  In an environment hyper-aware of ‘male toxicity’, Gessen shares his struggle with trying to figure out how to appropriately parent, how to appropriately deal with the frustration and anger he feels and the loss of control he acknowledges at times in dealing with his child. Daniel Engber stands with Gessen, also acknowledging, “But the anger would be coming just the same, as it does for every parent at some time.”  And so Engber seems to shrug or sigh a bit, as in a tenet of ‘good enough’ parenting, Engber quotes Gessan, “But you succeed when you make yourself irrelevant”.

When Parents Hurt: compassionate strategies when you and your grown child don’t get along    Joshua Coleman, PhD.   William Morrow Paperbacks, 2008

This book offers parenting principles, guidelines, advice and exercises to help a parent work through the turmoil of a difficult parent-adult child relationship, looking at the parent’s hopes, dreams, disappointments, emotions, and how parenting has affected the parent’s life.

TIME NOW FOR THE VINYL CAFÉ STORY EXCHANGE      Stuart McLean    “Learning to Skate”   Cheryl Glass, Pinehouse, Saskatchewan    Penguin Canada, 2013, 131

Cheryl Glass, who didn’t know how to skate, watched tensely as her young son struggled to learn to skate. But it didn’t deter him.

And that’s when I knew, watching him that night skating in the dark, that there are so many things my boys are going to need to learn that I won’t have a clue how to teach them. I’ll do my best to supply them with the tools and to introduce them to the folks who know the ropes. But then I’ll just have to stand by and watch through my fingers as they fall, pray that they will get back up again, and cheer when they do. I’ll have to learn to not interfere when they’re surrounded by those who are bigger, faster, and stronger. And let them go, even when every ounce of my being shouts at me to hold them close. I’ll have to stand by the side of the rink, and watch them skate.

Love Works Like This    Lauren Slater   Random House, 2002, 169

… I wish for the passion that transcends space. When I am with Eva [her baby], she is my heart. When I am gone from her, at work, or with a friend, she ceases to exist. 

Splinters: another kind of love story    Leslie Jamison   Little, Brown and Company, 2024, 138,139

Leslie Jamison and her father talked about their relationships near the end of her high school days. He told me, “At a certain point, when it was so difficult with you, I just said, Fuck it.”  … In time, I came to see that our difficult years were just that. Years. Neither more nor less. They weren’t everything. They were part of a longer story that we got to keep living.  This about a father who showed up at many of the most important or difficult years of her life.

Crooked Smile: what it took to escape a decade of homelessness, addictions & crime    Jared Klickstein, Bombardier Books, 2024, 186

My unreasonable expectations of life weren’t panning out exactly the way I wanted.  They never do, nor should they.  I’ve found that once I accepted this years later, life started to grow beyond what I imagined was even possible.

Fighting a Theological Monster     Wendell Krossa (my brother) Feb 13, 2025 http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=13104

Even Jesus, at least in the Gospel of Luke, says ‘good enough’ is good enough.

Luke offers a better version of this same message of Jesus because his wrap-up ending gets the spirit of Jesus right- i.e. “Be unconditionally merciful as your Father is unconditionally merciful”. Whereas Matthew, to the contrary, messes up by contradicting the very core of Jesus’ message with his ending statement of “Be perfect as your Father is perfect”.

“Immigrant Dad Talk Show” SNL   Jan 19’25

Two lousy parents, Dave Chappelle and Marcello Hernandez, and white guy Mikey Day who is into Communication, Compassion and Care, expose both parenting styles to laughter.

Specific To Adoption  

Parenting an adopted child 2^nd ed     Kathy Lancaster, Ph.D.    Barrons Educational Series, Inc., 2009, 13

As Kathy Lancaster writes, whatever our parenting styles and even if good enough is our common sense aim, we need as adoptive parents a baseline acknowledgement that “[a]doptive families are different than families built through birth…”. Whenever our relationship with our adopted child is strained or is going through a stretch of looking less like ‘happy families’ or worse, a tension will hover somewhere on the edges of our minds: “Is this problem about our parenting or is it about our child’s ‘bad blood’/genetics? “Is this normal or is this adoption?”

Lancaster advises, “Although adoptive parents will attest that the loving attachments are the same in adoption, practically everything else is not the same.

To help our children successfully adapt, we need to acknowledge the differences between adoptive and biological families and take positive steps to incorporate adoption education into our family system”.

Good enough adoptive parenting-the adopted child and selfobject relations

Dorit Noy-Sharav   Clinical Social Work Journal New York Vol. 30, Iss. 1,  (Spring 2002)

https://www.proquest.com/central/docview/227769260/44681D8C7DE74121PQ/8?accountid=48753&sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals

Boy does this article pick away at the underlying realities of the message that adoption parenting is different from bio-parenting.  It is well worth reading the entire article.

Google provided definition of selfobject: a person or object that a person experiences as part of themselves, and that serves a function for the self.

Summary

The article, written to encourage assessment for adoption readiness,  … examines several conditions that may impair optimal selfobject relations between adoptive parents and their child, so that self-development and individuation of the adoptee will be at risk”.  These conditions, not always unlike the concerns of bio-parents, encompass the clinical and psychological impact of dealing with infertility, the absence of what the prenatal period engenders, and then the pre-adoption assessment process and working through becoming attached to someone else’s child, one that may not physically resemble the adoptive parents and does not carry the adoptive family genes.  And then there is the question, are the parents on the same page with regards to parenting? With that comes the adopted child’s need-to-know and even the child’s yearnings toward the bio-family, as well as, whatever physical and psychological impact from the bio-parents or caregivers marked the child before he or she was adopted. In order to avoid abandonment again, the child may seek to cover his or her real sense of self, the one that may have, at least in the child’s mind, led to the child’s being given up, to remain secure within the adoptive family and indeed the child may be swept up in a ‘search for self’ that may last a lifetime.  The sense of abandonment may also concern the adoptors, as well, for the child may want to reconnect later with the bio family.

Good enough parenting, to borrow Winnicott’s (1960) well-known idiom, demands that the parent be able to go beyond his own needs for selfobject relations. By being an adult, having a cohesive self, he is expected to be able to differentiate between his own needs for security, containment, control, continuity and the changing needs of his child; he should be able to view the child as a separate subject, with her own personality. Even more, in order to provide the child with a facilitating environment that enables an optimal development the parent often forgoes his own needs in order to serve as a reliable and attuned selfobject for the child, being not only parents, but possibly therapist for the child.

Sharing of an adoptive parent’s experience of key themes central to adoptions   Abba Specialist Adoption & Social Services     http://abbaadoptions.co.za/articles.html

Summary

Aiming for/settling for ‘good enough’ parenting may be a common sense target when parenting adopted children for as the children work through the normal developmental hurdles of growing up, they may have added hurdles: a sense of rejection or grief/loss of their bioparents leading to shame or guilt, an uncertainty of their personal identity and about the best way to express these feelings and to what degree they are safe to give themselves up to trusting the parents they have now.

Adoptive parents are encouraged to build a secure enough base for their children to find a way to articulate and work through these feelings.

Older Sister. Not Related: a memoir    Jenny Heijun Wills    McClelland & Stewart, 2019, 150

One of the questions that comes as an adoptee seeks balance in her relationships with her adoptive family and her birth family: “Why do [the adoptive parents] think their love is so good that it is all we’ll ever need?  How can anyone’s love be that good?” 

Why “Good Enough” Parenting is Better than Perfection. You can ditch the stress. Everything will be OK. Chris Prange-Morgan, M.A., MSW  August 1, 2022  https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/full-catastrophe-parenting/202208/why-good-enough-parenting-is-better-perfection

Summary

Chris Prange-Morgan asks how as an adoptive parent she, like many other adoptive parents, could be guilt free but still do parenting right for children who have often started life in a traumatic environment when trending parenting advice seems to push a parenting style hard to maintain in the vagaries of human experience. D.W. Winnicott made the point that “that striving to be the “perfect” or “best” mother can cause some unintended problems for parents and kids alike”, impacting , as research has shown, children’s “emotional growth and executive functioning, and it leads to anxiety, depression and feeling helpless”. Parents’ relationships with their children are also impacted when they are driven by the pressure to be whatever is currently the perfect parent.  And if imperfection is all parents can maintain, Prange-Morgan offers this: “Role modeling self-love and acceptance provides the best possible foundation for my children to venture out into the world, and to know they will be OK, even in the rocky patches”.

Parenting Adopted Teenagers: advice for the adolescent years    Rachel Staff, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2015, 31-32,89

Summary

Under a heading, “Understanding the relationship between the past and the present when providing support”, Rachel Staff talks to adoptive parents who may be struggling with a sense of guilt as their child is having difficulties in the teen years. Not easing the sense of guilt, the wider circle of professionals, who may be now involved with the teenager’s difficulties, may make assessments that start by questioning the parents’ parenting.

Yet that assessment must take a wider view, starting with a look at the stability of a delayed securing of attachment with “an adolescent brain, firing on all cylinders from the amygdala (the emotional brain) is also characterize by immature and poorly developed prefrontal functioning. They are without the benefits of this ‘top-down’ moderating influence on their emotional response; they are therefore experiencing a double whammy which is likely to make their emotional experience this stage even more ‘wobbly’”.

Living through the experience with the teenager, the adoptive parents may not be managing constantly perfect parenting either.

Adoption Unfiltered: revelations from adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, and allies    Sara Easterly, Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, Lori Holden    Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2023,192,193

A key component to help repair a rupture is to offer a true apology for not knowing what we didn’t know [about the struggles of being adopted]. “Apologizing for some of the decisions we made when we didn’t have the understanding of adoptee loss can go a long way toward healing,” says Elizabeth. “It’s also helpful for struggling parents to find a community of other parents who get it and can sit with you as you wonder how things got to the point of estrangement. If we can acknowledge our role in the situation and not be so defensive about it, we might be able to shift the dynamic.”

… “It is not about blaming. It is about moving forward with new understandings…”

The Girl Behind the Door: a father’s quest to understand his daughter’s suicide    John Brooks    Scribner, 2016, 62-64

As time went on, parenting Casey often felt like breaking a wild stallion. They instinctively protect their space and dominate their handlers……There is no single method of training that works, because every stallion is different….

I wish I’d had a gift for understanding my own daughter. As infuriating as her behavior was, we had no reference point to determine if this was normal, because we had no other children. Instead we’d allowed our child to manipulate us into giving her whatever she wanted in order to avert her tears. It had to be us. We were incompetent parents. 

Seeking professional or otherwise advice did not help.  They tried the usual: time-outs, withholding privileges, rewarding good behavior and talking to her.

Feeling like miserable failures, Erika and I turned on each other. We came from very different parenting models.

Detachment: an adoption memoir   Maurice Mierau    Freehand Books, 2014, 152-4

Like Keith Gessan, Maurice Mierau is also conflicted by the frustrations of parenting, his image of what is appropriate and his reality when his parenting is challenged.  Yes his boys are adopted and likely have trust issues but it is worth noting that bio-child or adopted child, these men’s father struggles are similar.

Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents     Deborah D. Gray    Perspectives Press, Inc., 2002, 58,97

Parents who are struggling with raising their children will question their parenting: “a sense of failure is normal. Parents are vulnerable to shame. They are sometimes too loyal to share their child’s history”.  Or they may feel they must be apologetic for their child’s behaviour.  They need “to develop a sturdy sense of self-esteem”.

The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook: what traumatized children can teach us about loss, love, and healing    Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz    Basic Books, 2017, 100-103

Bruce Perry offers suggestions for helping struggling children become secure and free to develop by telling us how Mama P. cares for the children she is parenting: hugging and loving them whether it appears age appropriate or not.

Explaining Parenting Stress among Adoptive Parents: The Contribution of Mindfulness, Psychological Flexibility, and Self-Compassion   Ana Luz Chorão, Maria Cristina Canavarro, Raquel Pires  Int J Environ Res Public Health 2022 Nov 5;19(21):14534. doi: 10.3390/ijerph192114534 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9658673/

The conclusion of this study states:

Identifying and reducing the levels of parenting stress among adoptive parents is of the utmost importance, as it may lead to less emotional reactivity and, consequently, to more positive parenting practices, contributing to greater family harmony and healthier development of children. In turn, the innovative results of this study elucidate the importance that mindfulness, self-compassion, and psychological flexibility may have in reducing parenting stress and demonstrate the usefulness of cultivating them with (prospective and current) adoptive parents, particularly through their inclusion as target goals of psychological intervention both preventive and remedial.

adopting older children: a practical guide to adopting and parenting children over age four Stephanie Bosco-Ruggiero, MA, Gloria Russo Wassel, MS, LMHC, and Victor Groza, PhD.    New Horizon Press, 2014, 222,225-226

The advice: It is true, no one else is perfect and neither are you, but by providing a safe, permanent home and family to your child you are making a profound difference in his life. Some days you will doubt your ability to be an effective parent. On these days, give yourself permission to make mistakes. One day your child will hopefully understand that you’re not just Super Mom or Dad but a real human being with needs, fears and feelings too?

They quote one mother: I am an intelligent, articulate, confident woman and these little humans reduced me to a crying, irrational mess on more occasions than I care to admit…. I’m not sure how this is different from my bio-parent friends who go some level of crazy after bringing home their little bundles. I think we all share a similar challenge in that way.

Thicker than blood: adoptive parenting in the modern world    Marion Crook    Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016, 89

Instead of looking at raising children as a long-term war of wills, we can look at it as a long-term teaching project.

Environmental determinants of physiological reactivity to stress: The interacting effects of early life deprivation, caregiving quality, and stressful life events   Wade, Mark,  Sheridan, Margaret A,   Zeanah, Charles H,   Fox, Nathan A,   Nelson, Charles A   et al.

Cambridge Vol. 32, Iss. 5,  (Dec 2020): 1732-1742. DOI:10.1017/S0954579420001327 https://www.proquest.com/central/docview/2476511845/599377201D30433DPQ/3?accountid=48753&sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals 

Summary 

Children who spend their early lives in institutions experience profound psychosocial deprivation [of parental care] that is associated with altered stress response system development… Early-life deprivation is associated with persistent blunting of stress response systems, but normalization may be achievable if SLEs [stressful life events] are limited following placement into enriched family-based care.

Most research has been with younger children so less is known about the impact on older children who have lived an institutionalized life though research has shown that there may be continued “blunted response” to “HPA-axis responses to social stress among post-institutionalized children … Similarly, production of oxytocin – a hormone that regulates stress responses”…. 

In this study, an adapted version of Coddington’s Child Life Events Scale was used. The study “showed that prolonged institutional deprivation early in life increases the risk of long-term blunting of stress reactivity,”.  Though, “Emerging evidence suggests that recalibration of the HPA-axis may occur after but not before puberty among those with a history of institutional care….”  ….  “In other words, it may be that positive caregiving alone is insufficient to foster recalibration, but that puberty opens a window for recalibration, possibly thorough a mechanism of increased responsiveness to environmental input”…. for “adolescence is a period of heightened neurobiological plasticity that may explain emerging individual differences in cognition, risk-taking, and psychopathology…”

“Thus, while early adversity has clear and long-lasting effects on psychobiological development, later experience may either mitigate or exacerbate the effects of early adversity, thus offering opportunities to intervene during this period of increased vulnerability in order to protect against the development of psychopathology”.  Despite the depravation pointed to in this study, I think the study is leaving the door of hope open for parents wanting to offer loving stability and support as part of the “offering opportunities to intervene”.

And then there is this

So … we moved irrevocably toward the teen years; we were now living in a rural community. Yasik’s most hopeful friend potential was a sort of eat-all-the-fun-food last ditch friend and I prayed for 14 year old boys who love soccer, basketball, paintball, hockey, mountain biking, snowboarding and computer games and guitar – not a book on the list.  My attitude at this point was: do what you can today and if you can’t try again tomorrow. Optimistic?  I actually wrote at the end of the 2004 journal: we have happy lives now which means no stories any more. Yet I also noted that while we have so much to live for, I carry a constant feeling of foreboding that something will hurt our happiness – it happens to others all the time.

At the time, I heard a guy on the phone one day at the library say, “So even if you get sick or your life falls apart you’re going to be there for me?” Initially it seemed an amazingly immature and self-oriented concern, and then my mind re-ran the phrase “life falls apart” and I started thinking about this concept. We see life as an entity that doesn’t include the things that made it fall apart. Life then must be when all is well – ordered, happy, secure.  If anything negative happens – that is not life. The hell it isn’t.

So the question: Good enough. Not good enough. Not good enough. Good enough.  Which is it?

Carl Jung asked: How can I be substantial if I fail to cast a shadow?  Amanda Montell in The Age of Magical Overthinking: notes on modern irrationality, (2024,148,149) quotes a study that concluded, “Individuals with a more nuanced approach – even a biased one- do better than the extremes.” …Wouldn’t we have less imposter syndrome and fewer actual imposters if we just lowered our standards a bit? …to embrace our ordinariness … wholeheartedly embrace our own lack of expertise, then we might have a far better chance of showing others the same grace.”, Montell wonders.

At the January 25, 2025 Golden Globe Awards, Demi Moore, as she accepted ‘Best Female Actor’ award, told that audience that she wondered at one point if she should continue to act because she had heard negative critiques of her acting.  She said, “At the time I made it mean…” that she was not good enough. I think it is important to note that she let the thought in.  Later, a woman said to her, “Just know you will never be enough but you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick”.

Yet, according to adoption writers, for adoptive parents, doesn’t the question come down to whether or not the parenting style they choose to engage with helps the adoptee bridge the attachment gap sufficiently enough to support the adoptee into a stable adulthood?  Does this presume that ‘going beyond’ level parenting is demanded?

And the final word goes to Micheal Jordon, just cuz I like what he said: “If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.” A Coach’s Diary – “If you run into a wall, don’t turn… | Facebook