All parents have guilt or at least I assume they do and this helps me sleep better at night. Does any parent actually go through the motions thinking they are doing a great job? If so I would like to meet them and ask them for some pointers. Although I’m thinking ignorance is bliss, we can all follow that rule if we try. Now by guilt I mean the ever present thought of “how badly am I messing up my kid?” I think single parents have more of this guilty feeling because they feel like they need to make up for something. All the statistics say something negative about children of divorce. You never see a headline on Yahoo saying “Researchers find that children raised in single parent homes have higher IQ’s”. But all media bullshit aside, we were raised to believe that a family consists of a mother and a father, sometimes brothers and or sisters and a dog all living under the same roof preferably, or at the very least in the same state. Therefore when we look at our families and realize we are not following these guidelines we feel…well guilty. Naturally we wonder what else we are doing wrong.
Every once in awhile though our kids surprise us, and not only are we proud of them, but we are proud of ourselves as parents. We have that “I guess I’m not doing such a bad job after all" moment, and that might not sound like much but at that moment your kid may as well have just handed you a gold star for your behavior chart and said good job!
Since she could walk my daughter has always held doors open for people, I have noticed as she has gotten older and has friends over she is a very gracious hostess (this is the same child who cannot bother to get herself off the couch to get her own glass of milk when she is home with just me but hey…I will pick my battles). Just the other day she wanted to go to McDonalds with my mom. My mom is currently in between jobs and doesn’t have a lot of disposable income. My daughter knew this and offered to use her birthday money to buy her and Grandma dinner, when I told her she didn’t have to use her birthday money (feeling the guilt and going to offer to give her money to buy dinner for her and Grandma), she looked at me and said “I don’t mind using my birthday money if it is to help my family.” Translated to “Good job Mom…here’s your gold star!”
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