By Shelley Heaphy
I recently read an article of the same title by a blogger named Amanda Ledbetter and was struck by its truth. I could certainly relate to her thoughts and you possibly can to.
Have you ever had a moment of doubt in yourself during your child’s life? A moment where you’ve stopped and thought “Oh no, I’ve failed them.”
Most of us have, possibly for so many reasons. It might be because you failed to see that they were being bullied, you didn’t notice a developmental milestone not being reached, you thought the way they said that word was cute instead of troublesome, you didn’t realize they were hungry or they stayed in a poopy diaper for a long car ride.
Whatever the scenario you came out the other end thinking, it’s all my fault – I should’ve done better. That feeling of having failed them is often, almost always unwarranted but that never stops us from feeling the guilt and gut wrenching feeling of having not done what we could’ve, should’ve, would’ve.
This happens so often to each and every one of us parents. We take the brunt of whatever happens to our children and think that the only reason it happened was because of our (wrong) decisions.
How many times do we second guess a decision we’ve made for them? It is so hard to trust your instincts and stick with a decision when it can very easily be the wrong choice to have made. We can’t see the future, we don’t know our future children yet and we can only do what we think is best at this time. We also have to accept that sometimes it will be the wrong call and that’s okay. It’s not the end of the game. They’ll be okay. You will be okay. You’ve done your best.
There are events, moments and issues that stand out in our brain when we think about how we’ve failed our children. Those are the moments that keep us up at night and beat us down. I’ve been thinking though, do we stop as often and think about the smiles we’ve helped create and the laughs we help make? What about the successful accomplishments our children have achieved or the moment they look at you and say “I love you” deep into our eyes? There are countless sweet, beautiful moments that happen with your children, things that make you smile and run and tell your partner about. These moments should be looped in our brain on repeat to remind us that we are doing good.
Happy kids mean that we are not failing them. Kids that are growing and learning mean we are not failing them. Remember that the next time your child is smiling – you helped make that smile in some small part,and because of that you are not failing. You’ve got this!
