Asking For and Offering Help

Anyone who knows me or has read my previous articles knows that I’m quite open about the fact that parenting is hard work; and also the fact that it took me a few years to feel like it was something I could be open about.

I, like many of us, have always struggled with asking for help because I don’t want to be a burden on others. To intensify this struggle, our culture has propagated the false, damaging idea that if you’re a “good parent” you don’t find parenting to be difficult (or if so, it’s only in a fleeting, automatically rewarding way). When you combine all of those concepts, you can deduce that asking for help is admitting that you’re a bad parent — since good parents clearly wouldn’t need help with something that isn’t challenging. [If you could see me right now, you would see me rolling my eyes and making a sound kind of like, “psh!”]

Unfortunately, I learned how to ask for help out of sheer desperation. It was only after I was at my wit’s end that I would reach out. After a lot of practice – okay, and a lot of therapy – I’m now able to ask for help as a preventative measure.

When I can feel my patience wearing thin, or when the overwhelm starts to build, I tune in to that and use it as a red flag for calling a friend.

Sometimes it’s something seemingly small but ends up making a big difference in my mental state (“Can you please stop by sometime today to entertain my kid and keep me company in the kitchen for 30 minutes while I deal with the disgusting, overwhelming pile of dishes I haven’t done in 5 days?!”).

One of the things that made me feel like I could ask for help was when I realized how I felt when another parent would come to me with a request. It felt satisfying to be able to make someone else’s day a little easier. And nearly every time, the request someone was making, thinking it was a huge inconvenience to me, was actually no big deal or it was a genuine bonus in my day.

I’ve found that helping another parent is one of the best ways to shift my focus off of dwelling on my own problems; it’s a nearly perfect way of putting things in perspective, especially while you’re helping someone else at the same time.

Once I realized how I enjoyed helping other parents, I made the connection that perhaps others would feel the same way about helping me. I now love the ebb and flow of asking for – and offering – help. Some days I have more time and energy to share and I’ll drop off a coffee (or a beer, depending on the time of day) to a friend who I know is having a rough one. Other days, I’m the one who calls a friend and says, “Could you please take my child for 30 minutes so I can make an important call to a client without the inevitable background soundtrack of, “Mommmmmeeeeeee, Mommmmmeeeeeee! I just pooped and I need you to wipe me! Nowwwww! Why aren’t you answering me?? Do you not understand?? I JUST POOPED! Mommmmeeeeeeeeeeee!!!” Sound familiar?

The natural give and take that’s developed among my fellow Walla Walla parents is soul-filling and life-affirming -…

and it’s because of these people that I’m able to sit down at the end of some days and think, “Whew, this day wasn’t actually too bad. I’ve totally got this.” And it’s also because of these people that at the end of some days when I sit down and think, “How am I supposed to survive this until they’re 18?!” – I know I’m not alone.

And that feeling of support and connection amongst some of my greatest vulnerabilities is what gives me the oomph to try again tomorrow.