The Perfect Parent: Is there such a thing?
Posted in General, by doreenh on Jul 7, 2011
I’m the parent of a 12 year old girl and I got it very wrong today. I did all the things that as parents we’re told we shouldn’t do. I switched off when I could have been listening and I yelled when I could have remained calm.
But the truth is, being a mum or dad can be hard. In fact it’s probably the only job in the world where you’re not given any training or an instruction manual and to top it all there’s no get out clause - you can’t resign when you think you’re fed up with it.
When my daughter was born I imagined I was going to be some kind of ‘Earth mother’. However after a few weeks (maybe days) of being a mum I realised I was far from it. I really didn’t have a clue. In fact I just could not believe that such a tiny person would take over my world completely and challenge everything I thought I knew about being a mum. Far from being the perfect parent, I just muddled along and tried to figure things out along the way. And sometimes I still do.
However attending a parenting workshop with Parent Network Scotland (PNS) has helped me tremendously. Unlike other parenting workshops I’ve attended the PNS workshop helped me realise that it’s ok to make mistakes and to stop blaming myself for everything that goes wrong. I now realise that it’s not just me and that other parents feel the same way as I do.
The reality is, there is no such thing as a “Perfect Parent”, despite what we’re led to believe on television and in magazines. We’re all just doing the best we can with what we’ve got, even on the days when we know we’ve got it all wrong.
And that’s good enough.
- Vicki McCarthy
