This PEPS Mom Had to Leave Her Community -- But PEPS Found Her Again
An excerpt from Seattle author Tracy Cutchlow’s new book, “I Was Never Angry Before I Had Kids.”
Was that a baby crying?
Yes: there it was again. I was at the playground with my daughter, who was already six years old, but in the way that mothers of any age probably remain attuned to the sound of a crying baby, I heard it. I looked around for the source and saw a stroller off to the side. No one was making their way toward the stroller. The baby continued its soft, tiny wail. I glanced at the other two parents on the playground. The dad kept tossing a ball to his daughter. The mom kept helping her toddler up a ladder. Surely the baby belonged to one of them. Were these parents together, each waiting for the other to check on the baby? The baby cried again.
Finally the mom walked over to the stroller. She half-heartedly shoved it back and forth, hoping it would rock the baby back to sleep but knowing it wouldn’t. Her body language said, Argh, c’mon, you are supposed to be sleeping right now! Can’t you please, please just be asleep right now. And for a split second, I judged her. I judged her for how long it took her to go to her baby. I judged her for the way she jerked the stroller, like she didn’t want to be with her baby. Suddenly, I checked myself. I’ve been there. I know that body language. I remember.
The mom picked the baby up out of the stroller. Now she was trying to cradle him in one arm while holding her toddler’s hand on the playground platform at the top of the ladder. But the baby needed more attention, and soon the toddler wandered off the playground toward some trees and a chain-link fence. The mom called him back, twice, but he was on a mission. She didn’t have two more hands to do the easiest thing, to pick him up and redirect him.
She clearly could use some help. I wanted to offer it. But reasons not to kept running through my head. She doesn’t know you. She probably doesn’t want a stranger to hold her baby. I’ve offered help before and parents say No, no, I’m fine; she’ll probably say that, too. My face grew hot with the tension of wanting to help and the fear of rejection. But finally a side won: my deeply held belief that parents don’t get enough support, and that’s not right. I blurted out, “I’ll hold the baby if you want.”
That mama was so grateful, she practically tossed him to me. And I have to give her credit. Because so often as parents we demur and reject help. We have a strong sense that we get more credit (from who?) if we do this all alone. We’re alone in our homes with our kids, trying to also excel at cleaning the house and cooking the food and managing the household, and in the majority of cases working outside the home as well, saving offers of help until we’re absolutely desperate.
Is this a picture of strength?
Somehow we’ve come to think that strength is doing it all alone and weakness is doing it together. It’s the expectation that society places on us as parents and that we then place even more harshly on ourselves. We’ve confused doing a hard thing—which is admirable, even heroic—with making a hard thing harder to do—which is self-defeating. Of course we admire difficult accomplishments. The Olympic marathoner gets more adulation than the 5K runner. Because being an Olympic athlete is harder. Somehow we ignore the reality that, precisely because it’s hard, the Olympic athlete invests in as much support as possible. Coaches. Teammates. Fans. Doctors. Massage therapists. Gear. Good food. Rest. She builds in the highest possible level of physical, mental, and emotional support. She plans cycles of hard work and recovery time—not only weekly but daily.
The task at hand is the hard thing. The support makes the hard thing possible, even enjoyable.
The truth is that our strength has never come from muscling through alone. Our strength comes from working together. That has been true throughout history for our families, our communities, our country, and our species. Some say it’s the reason our species exists at all. So I applaud this mom on the playground for knowing something it took me years to learn: Isolation is not the same as independence. Interdependence doesn’t take away from independence.
That afternoon on the playground was truly delightful. The baby laughed as I lifted him up. The toddler was so happy to play with his mom. I loved snuggling a tiny baby again. My daughter called out, “Watch me!” to the other mom, picking up that we were all together now. And the mom, who had been distracted and irritated just moments before, was instantly playful and engaged again. I saw it. It was like flipping a switch. In that moment, when we went from alone to together, the mom gained what I’ll call capacity. She was better able to access her natural parenting abilities of playfulness and empathy. Her “here” -- as in, “I’ve had it up to here” -- shifted a notch.
“The task at hand is the hard thing. The support makes the hard thing possible, even enjoyable."
In a tiny but intriguing study, women estimated a hill to be les steep and easier to climb if they happened to be standing next to a friend, compared with women assessing the hill alone. The longer the friendship, the easier the hill was estimated to be. That's how simple and massive social connection is for us. And that's what happened on the playground. This mama didn't need advice. She didn't need a better method for calling her toddler back to the playground. She needed capacity. That's what allowed her to be the mama she already was. To feel she could handle, perhaps enjoy, the hard task at hand.
Community equals capacity.
We need community the way we need oxygen. And not in a small way, like a once-weekly walk with a friend or a couple hours with a stranger at the playground. These are necessary but not sufficient. We need others in a bring-you-soup-when-you’re-sick, watch-my-kid-for-the-weekend kind of way. And everything in between. Otherwise, we’re setting up ourselves and our children for more regrettable interactions than necessary. We’re signing up for a too-short fuse, a lack of self-compassion, a rise in resentment, a desire to flee. Angry or frustrated or irritated or anxious reactions are so much closer to the surface when we’re suffocating.
Yes, I know, you don’t want to burden anyone. But you can’t decide that for someone else. The mom at the playground accepting my offer- that was a gift to me, too. I would feel the same if she had asked first. “Could you take him?” -- or the millions of other possible requests parents could make—is not the offer of a burden. It’s the offer of together. You’ve felt that, haven’t you, when someone offered it to you? A small glee to be asked, an instant desire to help out, the lift in your heart of a connection or closeness? Together is simply an offer. The other person freely chooses whether to take it.
Cultivating true community takes effort, and I get it: Life is so busy, it’s easier to let everything else take precedence. Life with more than one kid is even busier. It’s hard to meet people when everyone is staring at their phones instead of looking around, available to chat. Parents who work outside the home can’t hang out after school dropoff to meet each other. Culture is conspiring against community. Living in a different way is a massive effort.
But it’s an effort worth making, not only for our children but for ourselves.
Adapted from I Was Never Angry Before I Had Kids
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About the Author
Tracy Cutchlow (she/her), is an award-winning journalist and the author of I Was Never Angry Before I Had Kids and the international bestseller Zero to Five: 70 Essential Parenting Tips Based on Science. She served on the board of PEPS, Seattle's largest parent-support organization, and is a founding advisory board member of the Fairplay Screen Time Action Network. She lives in Seattle with her husband and their daughter.
