“Every mom wants their child to be perfect.”

Those words felt like a punch to my gut. Anymore these days, it doesn’t take much for people’s comments about parenting (or how I choose to parent) to really get me riled up. I am who I am and I make the best choices I can make in the situation I have to make them. For some reason, this statement made me think. 

I don’t have perfect kids.

I don’t want perfect kids.

I am the mother to one child who had to have his urethra reconstructed (he was born not perfect) and now has a malfunctioning immune system. I have another child who has a malfunctioning nervous system and digestive tract. I know a lot about imperfection. 

It’s those imperfections that make us a perfect family. 

We cry together, we flip out together, we laugh together. We all avoid overly loud places that Molly can’t tolerate and restaurants that will easily send Charlie to the hospital. Molly teaches people how to use an epipen and Charlie hugs Molly and tells her everything is OK when she can’t quite get it together. My kids learn compassion and fairness. They learn that everyone has a bad day and that sometimes you have to wait your turn.

More importantly, it’s those little non-perfections that make those kids MY KIDS. It’s what makes them unique. It makes memories and multiple hospital issued baby blankets. It gives us great little personalities. It gives us little fighters.

It is what makes our family imperfectly perfect.