This is a statement that I say to myself a lot throughout my days with my boys. You see, I have a pretty vast knowledge of children, but did that prepare me for parenthood? Yes and no. I am grateful that I have a working knowledge of children and that I don’t have to learn from scratch, but…
I often wonder if my degrees and experience in child development are a hindrance on my parenting abilities. You see, I know what to do…for the most part…but do I actually do it?
I know not to yell…but sometimes I have a hard time getting through the day without raising my voice.
I know to let the child lead…but sometimes I take control.
I know to be consistent and follow through…but sometimes I give in.
I know to limit screen time…but sometimes I just want to put in a movie and take a break.
I know that every child develops differently…but I want my children to achieve the things their friends are doing.
I know that they sense my emotions and I need to stay calm…but sometimes I fall apart.
But…I love my children and I do the best I can. Isn’t that what we all do?
No parent is perfect because no human is perfect. I often read blogs and see such perfection in the writer’s parenting and think..wow she’s got it all together! Ha! In reality, when it comes to blogging, it’s easy to omit or distort the mistakes.
Even though it’s hard, I like writing about the mistakes I’ve made. I like processing things that I’ve gone through with my writing, and more importantly, I like showing you that we all mess up sometimes. Because there is no perfection in parenting.
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Lovely post Amanda…i sometimes get a little discouraged when reading other parenting blogs…surely they can’t all be perfect!!!
I like to inject a dose of reality when blogging too (especially when it comes to parenting twins, lol)
I sometimes think the early childhood education can be a hindrance in ways too but i think in the end it is more of a positive!!
Looks like you are human and a fantastic parent for realising that to me!!
Very true! A hard lesson I am still trying to deal with. I’m also a new follower!
You have NO IDEA how badly I needed to read this today, and it was just by coincidence that I happened across your blog. Thank you.
Absolutely beautiful post. So true. As moms we can be SO hard on ourselves … and doubly so if we have a background in working with children. Thank you … and I’m so glad we were able to connect through blogging!
So true. As a professional who does training around supporting children with challenging behavior I have recently had to seek out help for my own daughter. Someone wise told me that even doctors need to go to other doctors when they are sick.
I also believe that the most basic tenet of all of my “professional knowledge” about children is the most true – EVERY child is an individual and no one knows that child better than their parent. I may know a lot about young children in general but you have to learn about each single child.
I’m also on a similar quest to get it out in the open that parenting is really hard. We all make mistakes and we can’t always know what we’re doing. So much of it is trial and error and that’s ok. So thanks for this!
Thank you so much for all the lovely words about the post. Posts like this are always hard to write. However, I feel that it is so important to tell others about our mistakes. It helps us not to feel so lonely and like failures as parents.
As always I love this post! It is fantastic and I am so happy to see the “real” side of blogging as well. This came at such a good time for me as well! Thank you!