There are moments in motherhood that they don’t tell you about when you’re all glowy and postpartemy. If they did, you might just hand the baby back and say: “You know what, thanks, but I guess I’ll pass.”

Those moments are the ones when you do a gut check and say to yourself: “I don’t think I can do this. I have no clue what to do next.”

Motherhood has no instruction manual. In fact, I’d liken the moment that they hand that beautiful, stunning child to you, to the moment you pass your driver’s test. (Something for which there is an instruction manual. Hmm…that’s ironic, isn’t it?) In the blink of an eye, you go from something you wished for, hoped for, worked for, to a moment where you look at people and say: “Wait, what? Seriously? I’m not sure I’m ready for this.”

Of course you’re all madly in love and wanting to show off the world’s most beautiful child. But deep inside, there’s that nagging hint of doubt that makes you wonder just a teeny bit whether that potential to screw this thing up will ever present itself.

And as the child grows, and little things happen, you wonder again: “Do I have the right stuff?” Or, you think the way I do: “WWCBD (What would Carol Brady do?)”

Growing up, glued to the TV set, I thought the Brady Bunch’s Carol Brady was my maternal idol. When she wasn’t rockin’ her shag hairdo or cutting flowers while gazing at her artificial lawn, she was dispensing incredible nuggets of wisdom to her beautiful, blended family. While Alice did all the real work, Carol stirred something in a pot (making us think she actually cooked) and then had time to sit with the kids while they ate their wholesome after-school snack.

As a naïve and impressionable child, I just assumed that I would parent the way that Carol Brady parented – with style and grace and a kick-ass housekeeper.

Big surprise, Carol and Alice were pure fiction. The only way to really be a parent is to roll up your sleeves and get dirty. Sometimes horribly dirty. To be there when the kids come home and fall apart. To NOT have all the answers and to question virtually everything that you and your kids do. To discipline and be hated for it…but to still be there the next morning. To lose sleep because you let your mind wander to the worst-case scenario.

Truth be told, I tend to be kind of a negative person. If I’ve made a decision, I’m often guessing it’s the wrong one. I just assume that every other mom has cooked and cleaned and parented better than I have. But once in a while, my kids will do something that gives me a glimmer of hope. They make me feel, in that moment, that even if I don’t have the right stuff, at least they do. And to me, that’s good enough.

- E.E. Cummings - i carry your heart

Here’s something for the list of stuff they don’t tell you before you become a parent. There are probably thousands of things on that list, like how little sleep you’ll get, how often you’ll encounter vomit and how low your own self-esteem may get thanks to your children. Most of the time, experienced parents don’t tell you these things because it might scare you away. This might not scare you away, but it might surprise you.

Here it is: You will hurt more for your kids than you will for yourself. If you’ve ever been disappointed, been dumped, felt unattractive or been depressed, multiply that ten-fold when you watch your kids go through those emotions. And add a dash of helplessness to really make it difficult.

Maybe I’m naïve, but this, I never expected. Now that my kids are young adults, I encounter this on a weekly basis. Broken hearts, college rejections, hurt feelings, not being asked to the dance, low self-confidence…sometimes I feel like E.T. with a glowing heart when they go through these things and all I can say is “Ow!”

I realize that I weathered all of these same storms and made it through as a better and more well-rounded and perhaps empathetic person, but my first instinct is to throw my kids a Pity Party and try to fix whatever isn’t working. That’s the last thing that they want – my involvement. In fact, usually, my best course of action is none, which makes it infuriatingly frustrating. I usually have to sit back and hope they might want to talk to me till they feel better – they usually don’t. And so I wait and I heap on them generous doses of silent love and understanding and hope that it will be enough. It never is…for me or them.

* This post was originally published in my Momhood blog in September 2006. Sigh. Some things never change.

August is almost over and people are packing the store aisles looking for that last pack of #2 pencils. Parents are gleefully anticipating the return to scheduled days and kids are looking glum knowing that homework is just around the corner. Yes folks, it’s back-to-school time. As your friendly neighborhood blogger, I thought I’d dole out a little parent-to-parent advice about school that I’ve gleaned over the past two decades.

It’s time to let go. A couple of years ago, I saw an Oprah Winfrey show where she had moms who were having a hard time watching their children go off to college. Some of them were a little pathetic doing things like renting apartments near their campus in case their child needed them. Another woman was virtually suicidal over her kids heading off to kindergarten. That’s right – kindergarten. I remember vowing never to be that way. And except for a few tears, I’ve done OK. My point here is that when it’s time, let go. Your kid will survive and so will you. If your child going to school is the low point of your life, then it’s time to find a hobby.

Don’t be a helicopter parent. I admit it. I’ve been there and I’ve done that. I’ve micromanaged elements of my kids’ lives figuring that I could save all of us time and effort and they’d be eternally grateful. It has never worked out. My kids didn’t appreciate it, didn’t learn anything at all and ultimately blamed me when it didn’t work out. My advice is this: Take them to school and then leave. These people are professionals. Trust them.

Give the teacher the benefit of the doubt. Back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was in grade school, teachers were up there next to God. If I came home and told my parents that I received a detention for something, I was in HUGE trouble and could expect to be grounded…for life. Today, some parents feel compelled to question the teacher when their child has been disciplined. If this is you – don’t. Know that teachers have experience and are just trying to do their jobs. (For very little pay, I might add.) Will the punishment always be fair? No. But then life isn’t either. Do your child a favor and let them learn this lesson. Trust me. They’ll survive.

Go to the source. There will be times when you have a question about a class or a subject or an assignment or a project. You may even have a valid complaint. You’ve tried getting answers from your child but he can’t even find last week’s permission slip. Then it’s time to go to the teacher. Not other parents on the playground or the principal. The teacher. Be polite and respectful and give them the first opportunity to address your concerns. You might get an entirely different perspective on the matter.

Let them fail. In this day and age of prodigies and test scores and uber-tots that have genius-level IQs, parents have gotten the idea that perfection is the goal. That a bad grade ruins all chances for future greatness. And so they meddle and interfere and do everything within their power to make sure their child never falters or stumbles or makes a mistake. That, in and of itself, is a mistake. The goal is to learn which you cannot do if you don’t, at some point, fail. And that’s OK.

Think back to your own memories of school. Some were good and some were bad, right? Some of your teachers changed your life and some, well, let’s just say they gave you great stories to share at reunions. Nevertheless, you survived and so will your child. Advocate but don’t smother. But feel free to bring along a tissue to get you through that first day.

I’m currently in this really fascinating time of life. Thanks to kids and personal interests, my friends are between the ages of mid-twenties to early fifties. Some have tiny tots and others, like me, have grown or almost grown kids.

Universally, what is shared by all of these differently aged women – “momographics,” if you will – is that back-to-school is THE most stressful time of the year.

In the past week, I have had untold number of conversations about meetings, registrations, textbooks, open houses, homerooms, forms to fill out, things to sign up for, volunteering, carpools, school photos…! And along with school comes the dizzying array of extra-curricular activities. It’s enough to make anybody’s head spin.

The other thing about this time of year is that it’s very emotional for women. (Sure, it’s sexist, but I have yet to see a teary-eyed dad standing in the school parking lot.) Some of us very reluctantly send our kids off to college or perhaps kindergarten for the first time. Others are planning that first-day-of-school party to celebrate getting back a bit of “me” time.

No matter what time of life this is for you – teeny babies or college co-eds – there’s only one way to keep your wits about you – organization. Seriously, if you don’t have mad organizational skills, you’ll go insane. I vividly remember creating a staging area on my dining room table in the days leading up to the start of school. I’d have piles for each kid with signatures and checks attached to what seemed like millions of forms.

Now my organizational skills are needed mostly to drag people out of bed and sometimes shove them out the door on time. I try really hard to squelch the control freak in me by letting them tell me what they need. More times than not, I can’t help myself. I hate to admit it, but in the back of my head it’s because I feel like a forgotten form or check will reflect badly on my parenting skills. As my husband often says to me: “It’s all about you, isn’t it?” Ouch.

What about you? How are you feeling about back-to-school? Weepy or joyous? What drives you crazy about getting back into the old routine? If you had power, what would you change about this time of year?

The other day, some moms and I were talking about going away without our kids and, sometimes, without our husbands. We were talking about the degree to which we prepared our families for our departure.

Back when I was working full-time, I took great pride in my ability to juggle it all. (Turns out it was all a myth in my own mind. Something is always sacrificed for right or for wrong.)

Occasionally, I had to travel, which left my husband in charge. Being the control freak that I am, I worried that he’d have to struggle with something that I usually handled or that something might go wrong.

Before I left, I diligently did every last piece of laundry and left outfits labeled for each of the days that I would be gone. (Imagine the horrors if they dressed badly!) I typed up meticulous itineraries explaining where everyone should be and when they should be there. I left emergency contact lists. I filled the fridge and the cupboard with an abundance of meal options.

Looking back, I wouldn’t say it was all for naught, but I have to wonder if I should have let go just a teeny bit. So what if they wore mismatched clothes? If a permission slip didn’t get somewhere, my husband also has a college degree. I’m pretty sure he would have figured out how to handle it.

The funny thing is, I remember that they didn’t miss me all that much when I was gone.  (I remember one heartbreaking moment at the airport when my then infant son had no clue who I was when I got off the plane. Ouch. That hurt.)

Perhaps they didn’t miss me because I micromanaged my absence to such a degree that they hardly noticed I was gone. In my exhaustive efforts to make things easier, I may have taken away an opportunity for them to figure some of it out on their own and maybe miss me a little bit. And imagine the stories they could have told me upon my return!

I probably wouldn’t change a thing about what I did. As we all know, there’s no instruction manual for motherhood, especially being a working mom. We do the best we can with the circumstances we’re given.

This weekend I’m going away for my annual Girls’ Weekend. Granted, my kids are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, being 16 and 20. But I still get that itch to leave a list or write an itinerary or suggest clothing options. You see, it never really goes away, that need to mother.

What about you? Do you have opportunities to travel without your kids? What do you do to prepare for that?