Perfect Parenting~Perfect Bullshit I know all of us try,to our best capabilities, to be the best parent we can be. We want others to look at us and say “Wow! That Mom really has her shit together!” More importantly, we need to feel that our kids know that we are doing everything right. We want to do our best for them.I know I try my hardest to achieve a certain level of parenting proficiency.I’ve always been a perfectionist,so parenting was also approached with perfection as the ultimate goal. Perfect children? Perfect Mommy? Perfectly simple? Perfectly happy? That was the part that I hadn’t figured out yet.
Here I am, 6 years later with 2 gorgeous daughters who I think are absolutely perfect, to me. I, on the other hand, am not. I’ve been known to lose my temper and yell. I know, shocking right? I’ve found myself at a loss, stranded in a room completely overwhelmed with no direction and these two perfect beings tap dancing an Irish jig all over my very last nerve. These moments make me feel like the most unqualified parent in the world. After all, what kind of mom doesn’t think her kids are sunshine and rainbows all day, every day? Probably more than would like to admit it , that’s who.
Then it hit me.Parenting is not what I am unqualified for. I am unqualified to try and parent by stringent, ridiculous parenting standards. My girls need me to be a Mommy to them.I’m not getting a grade. There’s not some secret Mommy board of directors who is keeping an ever knowing, all seeing big brother eye on my every move to validate whether or not I follow the approved guidelines. It’s the girls, myself and what works for us.
I know there is most certainly others judging me when my 3 year old has a complete meltdown on Sunday nights over which panties she wears and I give in. But they don’t realize that her Daddy has left every single Sunday night for the past year and she has a hard time dealing with it, she is only 3. She’s sad and panties are not the problem,they are a symptom. Missing her daddy is the real issue but looking from the outside. How could you know?
When my 5 year old had such a difficult time at the beginning of the school year because she had no friends and cried about it for weeks, people looked at me like I was a moron for letting her get so worked up about something so inconsequential. What they didn’t know is that we had to relocate last year and she had to leave behind her school and all of her friends half way across the country.And that was the second time in a years time. I let her overreact about the situation this year because she needed to feel her feelings. It was my job to let her feel them, no judgment and try and help her move through them.She’s thriving now but anyone looking from the outside looking in would have thought I was raising drama queens.
The day that I popped off at the girls for asking me to go to the park for the 37th time and my friend looked at me like I was monster, it hurt and was an embarrassing moment in my Mommy history. What she didn’t know was that it was the 37th time they had asked, I had already told them no because they were misbehaving and they had been at that park yesterday for 2 hours.Not to mention, I parent alone 5 days a week and if you’ve never had to do this you can’t understand how difficult it really is.No one knows these things if they are not told.
Bottom line, my job is to be a good parent to my girls. For me, being a good parent means loving my girls unconditionally, supporting them in their endeavors, raising them with values and manners and doing my best to let them know the real me. I want them to look back on their childhood and know “My parents loved me”, they nourished my soul, my mind and my body. I don’t want to hide the real me from them.I don’t want them to hide who they are from me. There is no such thing as perfect parenting, that is perfect nonsense. We need to strive for parenting in a way that is perfect for our own children, whatever that may be.
What is your perfect parenting style? What parenting “guideline” do you feel is completely obsolete in your parenting world? What parenting technique would you never use? Which parenting technique would you be lost without?
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