PARENTING November 5, 2007 Issue

SOMETHING NEEDED TO CHANGE

AMY RICHMOND

YOU DON'T HAVE to be a parent to discover that outlining an answer for someone else's problem—even your own child's—isn't always helpful. As a parent, it's easy to expect your child to respond to situations in their daily lives just as you would. But as a mom of a preteen daughter, I've found that a prayerful approach to raising her works better than trying to force her to live up to my own expectations, and I've had to let go of quite a few of the parenting theories I had before my daughter was born.

Even though I'd pictured myself as a consistently composed mother with unending patience, there have definitely been moments when I've become frazzled. Such as when Lucia developed a full-blown phobia of animals.

As a baby, she was clearly uncomfortable when a dog barked or made sudden moves. Years later, when she was about six years old, she'd practically dash into oncoming Manhattan traffic to avoid passing a leashed Chihuahua on the sidewalk. I couldn't pinpoint a specific incident that had scared her, and this intense fear seemed so irrational to me that my patience was wearing thin.