A friend who I taught with in England sent me this great piece by a dad blogger with three boys – ages five and under. HERE is an expert (by the way, I love his blog’s tagline, “Living my life as is, instead of as if”):
If you are a parent of small children, you know that there are moments of spectacular delight, and you can’t believe you get to be around these little people. But let me be the one who says the following things out loud: You are not a terrible parent if you can’t figure out a way for your children to eat as healthy as your friend’s children do. She’s obviously using a bizarre and probably illegal form of hypnotism. You are not a terrible parent if you yell at your kids sometimes. You have little dictators living in your house. If someone else talked to you like that, they’d be put in prison. You are not a terrible parent if you can’t figure out how to calmly give them appropriate consequences in real time for every single act of terrorism that they so creatively devise. You are not a terrible parent if you’d rather be at work. You are not a terrible parent if you just can’t wait for them to go to bed.
You’re not a terrible parent. So maybe it’s time to stop reading the blogs that tell you how to raise the next President who knows how to read when she’s three and who cooks, not only eats, her vegetables. Maybe it’s time to embrace being the kind of parent who says sorry when you yell. Who models what it’s like to take time for yourself.
Here’s to knowing you’re a really good parent, doing a really hard-but-important job.
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