The past few months years weeks have been hard, not for any specific tangible reason. But because I feel that I’ve been telling my kids off the whole time. And I can’t be rational about it. I don’t feel like maybe they actually need telling off, it’s all about me becoming THAT mum.
You know the one. It’s the mum that we all silently judge, in the supermarket or on the street. The mum who’s shouting at her kids, or ignoring them, or (gently) dragging them by the arm. We don’t know the circumstances but we take the moral high ground and think I would never react like that.
But actually I do
I often find myself locked in the depths of mum guilt, having been cross at my son or daughter multiple times. They’re not naughty children, they are just normal, run of the mill, acting their age children. But yet they know just how to push my buttons.
I’m finding more and more that the way I react is because my children share similar traits with me, and not the ones you’d list as strengths on your CV. We end up bickering and I can’t seem to find the patience required for gentle parenting.
I don’t want to be THAT mum
The one that is judged by others. The one that other mums think I’m glad I’m not like her. Most importantly, I don’t want my kids to see me as just the one who tells them off all the time.
Am I a bad parent?
Have I raised them wrong? Too much CBeebies and not enough homous and crudites?
I know I’ve got to be more patient and more tolerant, to take a step back in the heat of the moment.
If my son doesn’t want to put his jumper on, it’s not because he’s going to grow up to be an axe murderer, he’s just a little boy who doesn’t like jumpers. I don’t need to shout. I can tell him, in a calm but firm voice, that we’re not leaving the house until he puts it on and that he can take it off when he gets into his classroom.
And I’m trying to remember the old adage of picking my battles. If my daughter doesn’t want to put her shoes on, that’s fine, she can walk to the car in her socks and put her shoes on when we get to nursery.
Wish me luck……