Good Enough, Just Fine & Bare Minimum Parenting

I took my son to a new school, and eventually had concerns about the way the classroom was run. I spoke to the principal and the teacher privately, who assured me that their methods were good enough and all kids that had been taught with this method turned out just fine. That was good enough for me!

A restaurant was examined by the health department and although there were some random bugs found and food wasn’t always stored properly, it was deemed good enough. After all, sticking to the health code’s restrictions can be really tiring, and no one had ever gotten sick there. They passed because it was just fine.

My son was diagnosed with a medical condition related to function of his heart. I was asking the pediatric cardiologist if there was a cure for it, and he assured me that it was a struggle and time consuming, and my son’s heart was good enough — most kids with his condition were just fine.

Yes Boss, I did the project you asked me to do. I only did the bare minimum, but since that’s all you requested, I’m sure it’s good enough, right?

Those sounded absolutely terrible, right?

They do when you use them as reasons to undercut your parenting too.

When someone is informed that their 3 year old is not large enough or old enough for a booster seat, and the mother’s response is, “She’s just fine. If it was good enough to pass the tests to be sold, it’s good enough for me,” you don’t sound like a good mom. In fact, you sound like one who is angry because someone was trying to help and you decided your ego was more important than your child’s safety. It’s okay to be defensive if someone was rude, but the important thing here is your child — not you.

Since when do we aim for “good enough” or “just fine”? I don’t know about you, but if I’m going to do something, I don’t want to half-ass it until it is “good enough.” I don’t teach my kids to do that either. We help Rowan with his homework and do additional work at home to work on skills he needs extra development in — if we had him color a picture and he didn’t try his best but showed us half-assed work that was “good enough,” we’d tell him to go redo it.

If I were going to buy a product, I wouldn’t buy the one that says, “Good enough to keep your child decently healthy so they turn out just fine.” Would you? Doesn’t that sound absolutely ridiculous and show a distinct and disturbing lack of effort and caring?

When people claim “I didn’t ride in a car seat as a child and I’m just fine” as a good argument for lax car seat practices, no one says, “Oh yeah, good point.” Instead, they facepalm and say, “Yes, you may be just fine, but lots more people DIED because of it, you moron.” “My baby hit the bare minimum so it’s just fine to turn her forward facing” is actually a terrible reason. Since when do we only do the absolute bare minimum to care for our children? I mean, heck, by that logic, as long as I throw Cheerios on the floor and put down a cat dish of water, my toddler should be Just Fine(TM) because I’ve done the bare minimum to make sure she stays alive, right?  Who needs more than food, water and shelter anyway? I mean, there’s staving kids in Africa who don’t have Cheerios… why don’t I go worry about them?

When we talk about breastfeeding, and someone says, “My children are all formula fed and are just fine,” that’s good. I’m glad they’re not unhealthy. However, that doesn’t mean that formula-feeding is the goal. It means that DESPITE the lack of breastfeeding, you haven’t seen negative side affects. And please don’t turn this into a “You’re making formula-feeding moms feel bad” thing, because it’s not. Your kids would be just fine despite the fact they couldn’t be breastfed for whatever reason, not because of it.

Heck, my cooking is good enough… good enough that we can eat it without puking or getting sick. It’s just fine… as in, it’s not terrible. But I am in absolutely no way under any delusions that it’s good, and it’s an area I fully admit I struggle in, and I work really hard to try to do better.

My point is that if your kids turn out “Just Fine” then that’s great — frankly, that’s the “Bare Minimum” everyone hopes for. But your GOAL should NEVER be just fine. Your goal should be the best you are capable of doing. You should never do the bare minimum when it comes your parenting… or anything for that matter. And when you find out that there are ways you can improve, instead of acting like an ignorant ass and claiming your methods are Just Fine, maybe you could actually use that opportunity to show your children a couple lessons:

Humility — the ability to admit when you’re wrong or your methods have been
Personal growth — the ability to continue to learn and change for the better
Intelligence — the skill of not acting completely stupid, especially at the expense of others
Responsibility — knowing that sometimes doing the right thing takes extra work

Set a good example. Stop making excuses.

And if you have a legitimate reason why you can’t do “the best”, you have no reason to ever feel guilty or shamed, because you know you did all you could, and yet again:

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
–Eleanor Roosevelt

Photo from sebastyne via Flickr

Tags: advice, education, health & medicine, parenting choices