Perfection Not Required

I’m well aware of the pressures parents put on themselves to be perfect – though fortunately my children are too young to roll their eyes at me or tell me that I humiliate them every time I put the trash out in my bathrobe and fuzzy slippers. Yet, as I potty train my toddler or get up to feed the baby at oh-dark-thirty, I am constantly critical of how well I’m playing the role as the adult who shoulders the incredible burden of bringing up the next generation.

I have a laundry list of parenting faults – I’m a little high-strung, I hate to mop the kitchen floor (negating any 30-second-rule for fear my kids will die of whatever has taken up residence there), I don’t find the emptying of an entire roll of toilet paper or tube of toothpaste particularly humorous and sometimes I put the pillow over my head and mutter, “if I ignore you can I sleep just 20 more minutes?”

And yet, my kids are lucky – they have parents who love them and are fiercely devoted to giving them the best life we possibly can. And that is enough perfection for them.

It is also the reasoning behind this month’s National Adoption Month theme: “You don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect parent: There are thousands of teens in foster care who would love to put up with you.”

Last month, President Obama declared November as “National Adoption Month”, to “honor those families who have strengthened America through adoption, and we recommit to reducing the number of children awaiting adoption into loving families,” and to “renew our commitments to children in the foster care system.”

The observance of National Adoption Month is more than just a celebration of adoption, it is a cry for more than 120,000 children who are in foster care awaiting a permanent family and an end to a life of turmoil. These are children who are not in the “system” by their own choosing, but have become without permanent home, family or support through tragic circumstances and the unfortunate choices of others. National Adoption Month aims to focus on the needs of these children, nearly 25,000 of whom age out of the foster care system each year and to remind each of us of our responsibility to the rising generation.

Every year, we are losing alarming numbers of these young adults who have “aged out” to cycles of poverty, crime, incarceration and death at far above the rate of their peers. Without a support system to prepare them for life on their own, many face an uphill battle that is rarely won.

It is this alarming fact that has lead AdoptUsKids, a  cooperative agreement between The Children’s Bureau, Administration for Children & Families and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, to highlight the message of “anti-perfection” – that even the quirkiest of us have something to offer a teen in foster care. Their PSA campaign reminds us all that each of us - foibles included - can make a difference in the life of a child in foster care by being a mentor, a foster family or by giving a foster child into a permanent, loving home.

We work with many individuals and organizations who champion this same message. This past year we helped Christmas Box International with their Lifestart initiative to help arm teens aging out of foster care with basic necessities. We champion the ideas set forth by Judy Cockerton of The Treehouse Foundation for their ability to make an impact. And we embrace the idea of reminding us all about the “forgotten children” who live among us.

At the very least, we ask that you hug a child in your life today. You’re a far greater parent, example or mentor than you realize. After all, you don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect parent.

-Sara

Nickle and Dimed: A Review

I would like to recommend an eye-opening book that is important for anyone to read, but is an especially important read for those who are concerned about changing the world for the better. The book is called Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich.

I am not announcing this as the latest “must read.” In fact it has been around for a while, but it just came to my attention. Here is the backstory.

 Barbara is a writer. The genesis of this book took place over lunch with her editor at Harper’s. Their conversation “drifted” to the question, “How does anyone live on wages available to the unskilled?” In particular, they discussed the difficulties of the roughly four million women who were forced back into the labor market by welfare reform. Whatever your political stand on welfare (and that stand is NOT the point of this blog), this mass migration from public support to $6-7.00 an hour wages, had immediate, practical consequences.

The discussion progressed to the point where Barbara was asked, or told rather, to write about the experience by living it. She was take on the role of a single woman with no support system, in cities she did not know, and live on whatever wage she could secure. The experiment took her to waitressing at a restaurant, cleaning hotel rooms, home cleaning for a national service chain and a shelf-stocker for a major retail chain.

These stories are interesting on the surface, and had I read this book 10 years ago, I would have enjoyed it on merits and likely dismissed it. However, reading it now, with a decade of experience in the public sector, I realize how our misunderstandings of one another continue to sabotage our efforts to improve the lives of others. We still, all too often, do not know how to help because we do not understand the lives and circumstances of those we would choose to help.  

For instance, we view poverty as a choice that was somehow made by each and every person who lives it. While I am well aware of the qualifiers on this subject, and that issues of self-motivation and work ethic often come into play, this book will open your eyes as to how nearly impossible it is for a person living on minimum wage, with no other support, to get out of the cycle.

The author was, and is, a hard-working, intelligent woman who, stripped of her credentials and background, learned how exhausting and hopeless the plight of millions of the “working poor” really is. Her journey brought to light everything from transportation issues to housing, health care, minimum wage and drug testing; not from a public policy standpoint, but rather from a victimization standpoint – a standpoint of what it is like to live in a cycle of working to simply exist.

It is worth a read and it will have an impact on how you view those around you, and perhaps on the manner in which you choose to help others in the future. It will certainly change your view next time you are in a coffee shop, checking out of a hotel room and passing the maid in the hall, or shopping at the world’s largest retailer.