IDK

“I don’t know.”

I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve spoken these words to my son in response to his endless questions about the world he is still discovering at almost 9 years. While sometimes the questions are anxiety-driven (he has a deep need to know about what’s coming up), most often he is simply curious about the world. I appreciate his healthy curiosity, but it can be exhausting.

I’ve become comfortable, nonetheless, with not having all the answers to all the questions, perhaps because they are questions that, for me, are incidental or trivial and simply don’t keep me up at night. I don’t have an interest in knowing whether or not a Great Dane is a friendly dog (canines being his latest interest) or fudging an answer just to settle his wish for one. “I don’t know, buddy.”

Existentially, this drove a lot of searching in college, as it does for many, to find one’s own faith or meaning, no longer able to fall entirely back on your parents’ raison d’etre. The unsettled feeling prompted by the words “I don’t know” was enough to keep one intellectually searching for answers, even if it ultimately brought you back around to the same or a similar place. “I know enough.”

But parenting a kid from trauma, a kid who had other caregivers — maybe a number of them — before finally landing with you, can prompt such a crisis statement when left with the realization once in the deep end of the pool that “I don’t know” what to do, what will work, or how to move forward. As I remarked to someone recently, it’s not that the bar is set lower. The bar is in an entirely different location, somewhere over there beyond traditional parenting, where consequences, rewards, etc., may or may not matter in the least, precluding any leverage at all for correction. To say it’s exhausting is to use the word in its purest sense; it’s draining, both physically and emotionally, and hopelessness is right there waiting for you to join it in the depths.

There is nothing like this kind of parenting to inform you how we may take both too much credit and too much blame for the way they turn out. We do, of course, bear great responsibility, but much as well is out of our control with them, and some things are simply to be endured (or enjoyed) with prayer and hope.

My most basic but sincere prayer of late is nothing more than, “Please help. I don’t know what to do.” And I have to believe he answers, even if it’s just with an extra supply of patience or grace to handle a kid that neither knows nor cares any better. I want the problem to be solved, the difficulty to go away — we all do — but it occurred to me, with a little inner guidance, that there’s no growth without challenge, even if it comes in the form of a small person who didn’t begin with the same benefits as me. God help us all when we just don’t know.