Pushover Parenting

My husband has coached girls’ soccer for seven years now and in that time, he’s seen the good, the bad, and the pushover-spawn, who have arrogantly challenged him when he’s given them coaching direction, talked on their cell phones during team meetings, sassed referees, and even quit in the middle of games when things weren’t going their way. Their behavior is not all that surprising to me; when you’re never told “no” and you don’t grow up learning how to respect, well, anyone, this kind of thing is bound to happen.

Geez, Lindsay, you’re thinking, right? Aren’t you Little Miss Sanctimonious today? Let me just admit right now that the reason pushover parents bother me so much is that I often feel like I’m one, too. Every time I call Punky down, I worry that I’m somehow preventing her from developing a closer mother/daughter bond with me. Every time I nag my older girls to clean their rooms or put away dishes, I wonder if they’ll see me as less of a confidante and more of an enemy.

Like most pushover parents, I’m terrified of making a mistake and irrevocably damaging or even destroying the relationships I’ve formed with my kids. I also worry too much about being judged by everyone else. The bar has been set so impossibly high for parents, with advice coming at us from Dr. Phil, Babycenter, and The Happiest Baby on the Block and countless other sources that we end up ignoring our gut instincts and instead, wussing our way through every situation, letting our kids run the show, and trying our best to make sure everyone believes that our children are perfect, making us perfect, too.

Lately, I’ve been reminding myself on an almost-daily basis that my job is to send compassionate, caring, respectful young adults out into the world, not to show off my mad parenting skills to everyone around me. That’s easy to say in theory, but putting it into practice is much more difficult, not to mention lonely.

I’d love to know what you think about pushover parents. Do you encounter them everywhere you go, too? Do they make your life more difficult by their judgment and their example? Or am I just way off base?