I would say, the most common fear, among new parents, is the fear of not “doing it right”.  When I say, new parents, I mean any parent that feels they are “new at this”.  I, myself, for example, have been a parent for 9 years.  However, I still feel “new” at a lot of “this”.  In essence, I feel like we, as parents, are always “new” at SOMETHING!  Newborn, toddler, child, kid, tween, pre-teen, teen, adult…..it’s all “new” to those of us whose oldest child is entering into a new phase of his/her life.  It’s hard.  NO ONE told you how hard!!!  Even if you had someone telling you how hard it was…..it didn’t come CLOSE to how hard it really is.  It’s not their fault!  There is nothing that prepares you for the stages of life YOUR child goes through.  Much less, the stage of life YOU go through as they go through those phases!  So here’s why I’m writing this…

I’m not a perfectionist by any means.  I am the type that believes that the quickest the job gets done, the better, and let’s move on to the next assignment.  I work with someone who cares more about perfecting the finished product.  Neither of us are “wrong”.  We just think differently.  Nonetheless, we both want to ensure we did a good job.  When it comes to parenting, I don’t care what your personality type is, you want to be PERFECT!  You reflect on your own childhood, your own experiences, and the advice you’ve received from outsiders.  We don’t want to make mistakes.  Venturing back to the earliest memory I have in my life….both of my kids are older than I was in that memory.  So I FREAK out if I realize I did something wrong because I’m PETRIFIED that they will remember it and that it will haunt them!

My mom was an amazing mother.  My mom IS an amazing mother.  She was solo most of our childhood.  I say it that way…solo…because she was not technically a “single” mother.  She was married to my dad for a short while.  Several years later, she was married to my step dad for a good while.  However, she, much of the time, was solo.  She did the best that she could in her circumstance.  Honestly, in hind sight, she did great! There were some things that I experienced in my childhood that did teach me what NOT to do or what NOT to accept…but it was nothing she did wrong.  Mainly things from the father figures (not including my big brother, who was and is amazing) in my life that really taught me the lessons I am glad that I learned when I, myself. became a parent.  I won’t have a stock pile of beer in my refrigerator.  I will not get into shouting matches with my husband, or anyone for that matter, in front of my kids.  I am thankful I learned that…but everyone knows there’s much more than THAT when it comes to parenting

So…what is a PERFECT parent? You have an idea of it before you become pregnant.  You plan it while you are pregnant.  You pray about it and dream about it after the baby is born.  But when you do stop trying to be PERFECT?  The short answer….?  There is no such thing.   There just isn’t.  I am sorry if you started this by thinking that you were going to get the answer, or at least a glimpse of the answer, to your question of “how can I be the perfect parent?”.  There’s NO SUCH THING!  The sooner you acknowledge and accept that, the better you, and your kids, will be!

In this society, in this county, in 2016, we are all so freaking worried about what our parent friends think of us….the methods THEY use for parenting….the advice THEY take…the books THEY read… Bottom line, folks, is the sooner you stop trying to be perfect, the happier you and your family will be!  First of all, everyone’s opinion of perfect differs.  That is the first reason you need to understand perfect parenting doesn’t exist.  Secondly, and maybe most importantly, if you hold yourself to such a high, STRONG standard, and fail, which you will…because perfection doesn’t exist unless you are God, you are creating unnecessary problems within yourself.

Let’s say you challenge yourself to run 10 miles in 30 minutes. You have never done that before…(example the stage of life your child is in)…but you think you can so you challenge yourself.  You fail.  It was unreachable.  You have never done it, have never even gotten close, yet you challenged yourself to that!?  You set yourself up to fail.  I think everyone would agree.  The worst critic a person has, especially a person who strives for perfection, is themselves.  So you set an unreachable goal.  And you failed.  STOP!  Now you are depressed, you are angry, you are moody, and now your husband suffers, your kids suffer, everyone around you is suffering!  STOP striving for perfection and START striving to do every day one.day.at.a.time!

Nope…no such thing as perfect parenting.  You WILL mess up.  You WILL make mistakes.  Guess what?…you WILL learn from those mistakes and you WILL make more!  That’s life!

A wise woman once told me, you can’t always control things that happen.  What you CAN control, is how you react to them.  So live life one day at a time.  Be a parent one day at a time.  If you mess up, learn from it.  If something happens outside of your control, pray, think, and react in the best way that you can.  Don’t stress over what your kids are going to become in the future.  Stress about what they are about to say to you right now when they say, “hey mom……”.  Handle the now.  Don’t handle the tomorrow or the next week or the next month or the next year.  That crap hasn’t even come to light yet!

Be the best you, right now, this second, this day.  You will never be perfect.  Just be you, love your babies, love yourSELF!  You are awesome!  BE THAT!

 

Bye for now,

RR