After my daughter was born a good friend of mine, a mother of two said to me ‘from this day forward you will feel guilty’. Boy! Was she right!
I feel guilty if:
- I skip a bath
- We keep her out a wee bit past her bedtime
- I don’t brush her teeth or for that matter her Medusa like hair
- I spend too much time on the computer
- She watches too much TV
- She gets ill because I didn’t breast feed
- She has beans on toast for dinner
- We skip a dance class
- I have a glass of wine before she goes to bed
- I give her a sneaky Happy Meal
- I don’t play with her enough
- I lose my patience
- I send her to the childminders when she isn’t 100%
- She wears the same trousers two days in a row
This list could go on and on. But, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m far from a perfect parent, hence the name Mediocre Mum, but as long as I’m trying my best then this will have to do. I can hear my own mother saying these exact words to me as a kid. Hopefully, this is something that I can instil in my own daughter.
I came across this stanza from a Poem called ‘Memo from Your Child’ and I thought it was fitting.
Child to the parent:
‘Don’t ever suggest that you are perfect or infallible. It gives me to great a shock when I discover that you are neither.’
Thank Goodness!