There are many, many, MANY hard things about being a parent, many of which I don’t get right. But the two very hardest lessons I find I still have to learn over and over nearly every single day, are these.

You have to parent the child that is in front of you.

And you have to parent the child that is inside you first.

I was lucky enough to have be on an Easter break by the seaside, and was sitting on a bench at a park when I saw a young couple with a toddler, doing A Trip To The Park.™.

This toddler had a baby doll, and all she wanted to do was to push the doll on a baby swing. The parents, however, were desperate to persuade HER to go in the swing, because that’s what you go on A Trip To The Park ™ , and they kept trying to make her go on the equipment, and threatening to leave if she didn’t because there wasn’t any point in A Trip To The Park ™ otherwise.

And I remembered being there, SO CLEARLY, with a really Small Small, wanting it to join in at a baby group, or try a slide, or stroke an animal – or take part in whatever the experience I wanted it to experience was – exactly as I had imagined it.

It took me so long to let go of the expectations I had about what my child would be like, what it would like and not like, what I’d be like as a mother, and what parenting and family life would look like and feel like and taste like – and just let my baby do what it wanted to and be there to support and enjoy it as it did so.

And as I sat there thinking ‘just let the damn kid push her baby she’s perfectly happy’ – I realised that I still haven’t actually learnt this lesson for myself. I’m STILL doing the same thing – just with slightly older children.

Because too often I find myself parenting the child of my expectations, and the not the child in front of me.

For a start, I didn’t expect the child in front of me to be so anxious. Or for her anxiety to make her so angry, for it to make her not want to go anywhere or do anything – including to the park. For it to stop her eating, and playing, and enjoying, and joining in.

And I was on the bench because I was ANGRY the day wasn’t going as I wanted it to, and the Big Small wasn’t behaving how I wanted her to.

But you have to parent the child that is in front of you.

And the very biggest challenge you have in doing that is having to parent the child inside you first, and harder.

The one that gets cross when it is thwarted.

The one that remembers what it loved as a child and tries to recreate it.

The one that remembers what it hated as a child and tries to resolve it.

The one that feels rejected.

The one that craves approval.

The one that wants to be understood.

The one that wants to be seen.

The one that feels injustice.

The one that feels despair.

The one that feels afraid.

Managing myself, my baggage, and my emotions remains the very, very hardest part of being a parent. And the most unexpected.

Like all of us, I thought I was going into this whole shabang as a whole and rounded person. But having children made me realise how little I knew about myself, about children, and about my own parents – particularly my mum. And I realise it again and again at all the different stages of my motherhood and their childhood – and the echoing stages of MY childhood, overlaid.

The only way not to be crippled by the confusion, guilt and shame of it all is to recognise the child inside you, acknowledge the feelings you’re feeling, accept them, think about why you’re feeling them – and then offer yourself the same kindness and grace you’d like to be offering your own children in their own peaks and troughs.

Because it’s the only way you’ll be free to properly give it to them.

So I forgave myself for feeling angry. And I forgave the Big Small for feeling angry, too. And I got off the bench, smiled my biggest smile at the couple with the toddler, and went to see what the Big Small was doing, what she wanted to do, what she was feeling now, and what she wanted to feel next.

And we walked along the seafront and performed poems on the benches in front of the sea instead.

And for a moment, a perfect moment, all four of us were in front of each other with no expectations between us, and all four of us were happy.