Mummy Guilt 101

Social media is a great platform for sharing, you can instantly release images of you and your activities and whereabouts for all your friends and family to see. I have a lot of parenting pages I have followed over the past few months with plenty of encouraging, funny and sometimes not so funny but all to relatable parenting experiences, usually with an encapsulating image to follow. This time I had scrolled through and one topic had caught my eye, a mother had photographed her child eating. Simple enough, the back story she had written to explain her dilemma was along the lines of: 

THE DREADED MUMMY GUILT

I read through further to understand what had happened, maybe something serious had happened but no, she felt "mummy guilt" for giving her child left overs from the day before and expressed how bad she felt for doing so. You should not feel anything, especially guilt for being able to feed your child, especially leftovers. Maybe in her head what she was something wrong or bad, maybe there is so much pressure on mothers to be perfect and fit into an idyallic version of themselves for everyone else to approve and appraise.

What ever happened to the "good old days" where you were fed at breakfast, lunch and dinner and whatever was there was eaten or you probably went hungry and in response to this no one reacted negatively towards you and your ability as a parent, unless there was a negative Nancy in the village, but I digress.  I wonder to myself, how have we progressed so far as a society with technology but seem to be going backwards that parents feel the utmost pressure to perform a balancing act and to have demands and expectations placed upon them. Are we all not human? Do our capabilities not go only so far.

Well whatever the case may be, I truly hope you do not discount yourself as a parent, spouse, best friend. We all do what we can and we all seem to make it out alive and ok, so maybe taken a page from our parents book this once wont hurt. Don't worry about the Ned Flanders next door, love your children they way you know how, lead them in the right direction and to be a better generation and really the rest is up to them.

I hope you remind yourself of this everyday:

• NO ONE, has any right to make you feel guilty, including yourself. 
• You try so hard to do the best, be the best and give the best you can to your family, NO ONE can discount you on that. EVER.
• Stop trying to your own worse critic and give yourself the credit you deserve.
• You know your child and you know what is best for them.

So the next time you feel eyes on you and guilt creeping upon you, I hope you take a moment and remember all you do and feel proud of it, you're doing the best you can with what you've got.