Not every road you come across will be worth
travelling, writes
Orla Breeze
.
Road to nowhere
advice
(rated PG)
I
’ve travelled many roads since
I became a parent, and not
necessarily the ones I had planned.
Don’t get me wrong: each road was
memorable in its own way, but I’ve pretty
much decided not to travel back down
some of them again. Ever. Allow me to
explain.
The journey began when I found
myself on the Road to Dazed &
Bewildered, before I even had time to
get my seat belt on! I swear, one minute I
was on Pregnant & Excited Path; the next,
somewhere
very
different. It was one of
those twisty-turny, sharp-bendy kind of
roads with sheer drops when you least
expected them, and a
whole
lot longer
than it looks. But after a few months of
driving round in circles, I finally spotted
the off-ramp to Calmer Times and took it.
Until a few years later, when I ended
up on the Road to Crazy Town. A decision
to move across the world coincided with
my third pregnancy. And, with two other
kids under the age of five and no family
within 200 miles, I was lucky to reach the
end without crashing…which I almost
did when I took a wrong turn down the
Road to Chaos. On paper, it looked like
the kind of place where my kids would
miraculously change their behaviour
without any effort on my part. In reality, it
was the biggest, longest, steepest uphill
struggle I have ever had to take, and
then some!
The Road to Exhaustion was an
accidental detour caused by my
decision to participate in the 90-minute
roundtrip commute to my kids’ school.
No, I don’t know what I was thinking
either. That stress-inducing diversion
inevitably led to repeated trips up and
down the Road to the Fridge, which put
me back on the Road to Elasticated
Trousers, which then turned into the Road
to Pinot Grigio. So, it’s not that surprising
that I have zero plans to revisit any of
these routes anytime soon. Well, except
for the Pinot Grigio one. A girl needs a
little distraction from time to time.
But there is one other road I like
returning to. No built-up cityscape or
rush-hour traffic on this one, only wide
open vistas and clear perspectives. It’s a
“put the top down and your shades on”
kinda road trip, where the sun is always
shining and the living is easy like Sunday
morning – a pre-kids Sunday morning,
that is!
To be honest, I wasn’t expecting to
end up on this particular track. It wasn’t
even on my radar, but just as I had
completed my umpteenth trip along
Anger Alley with a few pit stops at Guilt
Gulch, it suddenly appeared on the
horizon. And once I saw it, there was no
going back. I put my foot down and sped
ahead to the Road to Surrender. And I’ve
been happily driving down that highway
ever since.
No matter what kind of parenting
journey we’re on, surrendering to the
fact that kids will be kids can make for a
much smoother ride. Driving us around
the bend or up the wall is their way of
discovering who they are. Adding a few
stop signs and a lot of traffic signals is
our way of ensuring they don’t veer too
far off course. But ultimately, the more
experienced we become at navigating
our own parenting path, the easier it
will be for them to avoid all those wrong
turns. A wise man once wrote about
choosing roads less travelled, but I’m
sticking with my frequent trips down the
Road to Surrender. And that has made all
the difference.
20
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