It’s the end of a long day, when finally the battles over teeth cleaning (its just two minutes sweetie), hair brushing (I know its tangly, that’s why we need to brush it), getting into bed (you’re thirsty are you? again?), and back into bed (just take off your top if you are hot), and settling down to sleep (yes, I have left the light on in the bathroom, yes your teddies are all lined up in order, yes I have put the cat out) are over and you can settle down, put your feet up, drink you first hot cup of tea (what is it now honey?) that doesn’t go cold, and finish your “To Do” list by reflecting on the day.
Despite all the successes, the getting them dressed and to school/ nursery on time, the not-losing-it in Asda, the mostly empty plates, the mostly happy times, our mind is drawn, like a fly to one of those buzzing blue lights, to an incident. Something that didn’t go exactly to plan and it comes to blight our peace and remind us that we got it wrong.
And we put ourselves firmly on the Parenting Naughty Step.
STOP IT
It is all too easy to find ourselves lacking as parents. Because I guess that you, like me, like every other parent, is not the therapeutic parenting (TP) twin to Dan Hughes and Bruce Perry.
You might have read their books, absorbed the theory and then been a little disappointed that every so often you still f*ck it up. You lose the plot, your buttons get pressed, you are too tired and you focus on correction not connection, or get agitated not animated, or use the F word with them (and it wasn’t “Freddie”).
Welcome to my morning (without the F word). I slept okay and yet something triggered a grump. My kids, having seen the PACE poster drawn large on our wall, and overheard Andy and I encouraging each other, became a new, PACE-informed conscience in my life today
“Remember Mummy” Nibbles said in a patronising tone that is disturbingly similar to my own “Play-fulness”
#Busted
So after drop off, I walked and put myself on a virtual naughty step.
But it’s not just me who does this. Yesterday one of my twitter friends admitted that she was spending “precious me time in a cafe thinking about all the bad parenting choices I’ve made in the last 24hrs.” We tweeted and I think I cheered her up.
You are not alone in the self recrimination. But it’s not useful if it only makes us feel bad. So let’s get off that darn step and change the script.
PLAYFULNESS
This is my favourite approach.
You get to play the “How could this be even WORSE?” game.
Don’t let a tiny slip grab too much limelight. Make it seem like a bit-part, a walk-on extra in a more extravagant melodrama (think screaming match outside the Queen Vic). How? Create in your mind, a much more cringe-worthy situation. Play with the ideas and images, until they become ridiculous, silly, exaggerated, a game of bad parenting one-up-parentship
“You shouted at him? That’s nothing, I shouted so loudly that I knocked a picture off the wall next door, and my neighbour was on the radio for a phone-in about noisy neighbours, and the recording – you can hear me screaming like a banshee – is all over social media and I am so embarrassed and that’s just the start, 5 milliseconds later my mother-in-law rang me up to tell me what a terrible mother I am, then unfriended me on Facebook and I received a telegram uninviting me to the Royal Wedding, and and and we have run out of milk so I can’t even drown my sorrows in a cuppa. And the washing machine is on the blink. And the batteries have run out in the TV remote/ my vibrator.”
Think of the Four Yorkshiremen Sketch.
Or cheer yourself up watching some of the much more viral parenting fails on YouTube – search terms like “why you shouldn’t leave your kids with Sudocream” or “kids and sharpies” and smile that the indelible tattoos, whilst wiping your forehead and thinking “there by the grace of God..”
Now you are feeling a bit lighter about it, try a little..
ACCEPTANCE
Forgive yourself.
You are human after all (soundtrack: Only Human by Rag’n’Bone Man). We all mess up sometimes. Unless you are Donald Trump, when you not only mess up every day, but tweet loudly to millions of people about it too (more playfulness, I hope you noticed).
It is totally normal to lose your cool, to sometimes tell your children what to do instead of asking them, or solve their problem instead of helping them work it out for themselves, to shout at them to “calm down” even though that phrase has never worked, not even once.
It is okay to be tired, to have run out of TP juice, to feel wrung out and run down, or to be firing on all cylinders and still fall into patterns of parenting that we experienced for years from our own parents, who were still doing the best they could given the circumstances.
You are not WonderMum or WonderDad. You are YOU. Perfect in your imperfection. Fallible, human and you are doing AMAZING.
Get real. Yes you messed up, but let’s also accept how fab you are. List at least 3 ways in which you did a good or great or genius parenting job today. Because the chances are, over the day you were a good or great parent 95% of the time, and yet what are you focusing on? The 5%. Yet if your child scored 95% on a test, I bet you would be over the moon.
Not enough? Move onto stage 3:
CURIOSITY
So the sh*t hit the fan today. And you fell off your parenting throne.
WHY?
Let’s get curious, put on our Holmesian deerstalkers and explore what exactly happened:
- What was happening just before you lost it? Were you tired/ frustrated/ trying to do too many things at once? Be honest.
- What triggered the incident? What specific word, action, inaction? Be precise.
- Why did that push your buttons? What belief or identity did that situation challenge in your mind? What rules have you given yourself or your children that were broken? What inflexibility is tripping you up?
- What did you want to happen instead? What would need to have been different for that to happen today instead of what did? Re-run the scene as-if you had been brilliant and see how differently you feel and how you might increase the chances of that outcome next time.
Look for how this moment in time is a gift. An opportunity to rewire something in your brain, to address something in your past. What can you learn about how you do things, or what you think about being a parent that you might want to change?
You may want to do this with your bestie or partner, so that they ask you questions to explore what happened and why it mattered and why you are beating yourself up. In every situation we can learn something about ourselves (even if we chose not to).
EMPATHY
The final technique is to talk to yourself with empathy. Be your own bestie. Give yourself a break and be kind to yourself. Gentle. Forgiving.
“I can understand how upset you are, you want to be the best parent in every situation and you feel like you failed today / let your child down/ weren’t the parent you wanted to be.”
- Instead of trying to distract yourself from how you are feeling (with wine, chocolates, TV, exercise), lean in. Go deep. Find what lies beneath in YOU.
- Breathe. Long and slow. And again. Long and slow.
- Close your eyes. Relax. Let go.
- Feel with every fibre of your being. Focus on the feeling, because you might find that underneath your initial feeling is something enlightening.
I was upset a few months ago and @mumdrah gave me permission to be sad, to feel it all, to be with that feeling instead of running away from it. And under my sadness at an escalation, I realised I was truly scared about Bubbles’ future. My heart was breaking, worrying that if we didn’t manage to solve it, or improve things, that there would be bleakness ahead.
That changed things for me. It made me step up in a new way. Those tears were a gift.
There Is No Magic Bullet
When we are tired, exhausted, when something has broken, when we run short of energy, funds, fun; it is all too easy to blame ourselves for situations that escalate, that don’t go to plan.
But perhaps we should see those situations as GREAT. Because in each of those failures is the seed for our success. As Edison might once said (it’s hard to be sure, since I wasn’t there)
You didn’t fail. You just found a way to not-parent.
- Be playful.
- Be accepting
- Be curious
- Be empathic
Forgive yourself. You are only human.
