I wonder how I could have gotten this whole parenting role model thing so wrong

Three of my children are already teenagers. And I must admit, I’m a bit jealous of their futures.

And of their future children’s futures.

When my teenage children grow up, they’re never going to disagree with their spouse.

Their children will go to bed on time, eat whatever they’re served (because it won’t be overbaked or too salty), and the younger ones will never disturb the older ones.

Their children are going to buy whatever clothes they want, no matter the cost, no matter how many dresses or shirts they already have in their closets. And they’re never, ever — and I mean never, ever — going to have to rummage in the dirty hamper for a school uniform because the laundry schedule is running late.

They also won’t have to help around the house.

When they tell me this, I wonder how I could have gotten this whole parenting role model thing so wrong.

Then I remember that when I was their age, I was going to have ten children with golden voices, and they and their father would go around the country and perform in the most adorable family choir. And they would do this enthusiastically, without threats or bribes.

Unfortunately, while my husband does have a warm, soothing voice, he doesn’t like to perform in public (which is very frustrating, because if he would just cooperate, I could be the wife of the next Ishay Ribo), and my children have inherited my inability to carry a tune.

I was also going to be a lawyer. Not just any lawyer, but a court attorney in a gown and white collar, one of the first in Canada to have so large a family. And I would do that, of course, so I could support my husband in kollel so well, we’d have a full-time housekeeper and he wouldn’t even have to clear his own plate after supper.

Never mind that. I got married, moved to Israel straight out of seminary, and never made it to law school. The closest thing I have to a court attorney’s gown is my maternity Shabbos robe. I work in marketing, and I don’t even have weekly cleaning help — cleaners here earn more an hour than I do.

Now I recall, I was going to learn Navi together with each of my daughters, maybe even sifrei mussar or the Nesivos Shalom. Well, the last time I opened a sefer was to prepare a vort for my bridal shower. In my defense, I don’t think my Hebrew-speaking kids would have the patience to learn at my pace, anyway.

Okay, so a lot of the critique of my parenting skills and household management techniques stems from unrealistic adolescent expectations. And I’m sure that b’chol dor vador teenagers promised they’d never sound or act like their parents. And then found themselves doing exactly that a few years later.

But it still freezes my heart when my children promise they’re never going to do things the way I do them. What happened to lovingly passing on the torch of the mesorah to the next generation? And am I really so terrible my children don’t want to emulate me?

Then my preschooler says to me, “I don’t know what I’m going to do, Ima, the baby is just so cute.” And I observe him coming home from school with a pekeleh and dividing up the nosh between all his siblings, and my heart starts to defrost.

Then one of my teens senses the tension I feel after being home all day with a sick and cranky child and offers to take said tantruming toddler to the park, and my heart thaws a little more.

Then another sees the exhaustion on my face on Friday night and serves the soup for me, taking orders for onion and carrots and zucchini and soup nuts just like I do, and my heart melts completely.

And then a siren rings out, and instead of dashing for safety, my older kids run to the little kids’ room and scoop up their sleeping siblings from their beds, and I cry.

And I think that maybe I haven’t done such a bad job at this parenting thing after all.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 942)