I Use The Television As A Babysitter & Other Guilty Confessions
Motherhood is hard, but you can lessen the load by doing things your way.
It’s 6:58am on Saturday morning and I’m awake. I know that in exactly two minutes my five year old son will be knocking on the bedroom door, ready to start the day.
7:00am is when we allow him to wake us up — any earlier and he’s sent back to his room to either read or play quietly.
It works. He knows the rules and we stick to them. It also helps that he’s been a great sleeper since birth.
I’m lucky, fortunate and blessed that sleep has been easy for us, but that doesn’t mean I’m not tired.
You and I both know how exhausting motherhood is. The constant drain on your mind, body and soul as you try your best to raise a tiny human can feel relentless.
Some days are pure joy and others leave you ready to rip your hair out — wondering what strange, evil poltergeist possessed your child.
In the five and a half years of mothering that I have under my belt I’ve learned that survival is often the best I can hope for.
What do I have to do to make it to the end of the day?
Usually this means doing things that the experts advise against, and that other mothers might judge me for, but the longer I do this gig for the less I care. I’m learning to rely on my intuition to guide my parenting decisions.
Mommy guilt is real, and it hurts. It makes us feel inadequate as mothers, as partners and as people. We feel like because we know better, we should do better, and when we can’t meet these arbitrary standards that we’ve failed.
The truth is that we never fail if we keep showing up and doing our best — whatever that may look like.
For me it’s meant letting go of trying to parent by ‘the book’, and to stop worrying that I’m screwing my kid up.
So what exactly have I decided doesn’t matter? What are my guilty confessions of my imperfect mothering?
I Use The Television As A Babysitter
In order to get anything done that requires more than five minutes of focused attention including taking a shower, I’ll turn on the TV and sneak away.
Knowing that I have time where I can actually think without being interrupted a million and one times is a priceless gift. A gift that I have Netflix to thank for.
Do I want to set my son up in front of the television to mindlessly pass time?
No.
But do I do it?
Yes.
As a mother you’re constantly in demand and finding space to breathe and not have all your senses under assault simultaneously can be impossible.
No matter how many times I try to set up my child to play independently, make crafts, read books, or do Lego, there is nothing like television to actually buy me the time I need.
Forget even buying time. I can’t always be actively engaged in entertaining my son and keeping him busy. Independence is a learned skill, and often at the end of the week the last thing I want to do is assume the role of ‘teacher’.
I can’t. But I’m learning that it’s okay.
It’s okay to do what you need to do in order to make it to the end of the day, the week, the month or even the year.
I Feed My Kid Chicken Nuggets and Mac & Cheese — All The Time
You might have had aspirations and #momgoals like I did when it came to feeding your little one a healthy, balanced diet.
It started out great! The transition to solid foods was easy and I was busy making my own food purées packed with whole grains, veggies and protein.
My son loved anything with beets and he would eat chickpeas like candy. Breakfasts were a tasty homemade oatmeal blended with banana, plain Greek yogurt and a dash of cinnamon.
For lunch he’d indulge in what I called Moroccan Chicken Stew, where I’d hide a mountain of veggies with chicken and spices and let my food processor do the rest.
He would eat this by the bowlful and I was so proud of my parenting prowess.
But then my toddler turned into a preschooler and convincing him to eat became a game of persuasion. This evolved into meal times becoming something of a battle zone with one of us ending up in tears.
I tried the “this is what’s for dinner, and there aren’t other options” approach. My son didn’t care about going to bed hungry and would leave the table having literally eaten a single pea. A single pea.
In the mornings he would then stuff himself with cereal and yogurt and go nuts with lunch at daycare if it was something he liked.
He’d started to eat so much during these times it was to point where he was making himself sick and throwing up because his stomach was so full.
At this point I just said “screw it, the kid has to eat.” So that’s meant a lot of chicken nuggets and mac and cheese, and that mini microwave pizzas and hot dogs are my new best friends.
I do my best to include fruit and veggies along with the processed, prepackaged food engineering miracles that I dish up, and some days all that means is he’ll eat a baby carrot or two bites of a cucumber.
But you know what? It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. He’s fed, healthy, strong and meeting his developmental milestones. Our relationship is better and meal time isn’t something I dread.
I Don’t Care About ‘Extracurricular Activities’
You and I both know the intense pressure parents are under to enroll their children in extracurricular activities that end up turning evenings and weekends into a dizzying dash from one thing to the next.
Whether it’s soccer, hockey, piano and Spanish lessons, or Scouts, violin, gymnastics and painting classes, there is always something that we ‘should be considering’ to provide more opportunities for our children’s development.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want my son to have some of these experiences, but I’ve also learned that often the task of getting him to said activity is a stress inducing nightmare.
I can’t keep up with a full time job, the mental load of motherhood, and have my son at an activity every night without major repercussions. It’s not good for him or my husband and I.
We struggle to make it to U6 soccer once a week for his half hour practice and the half hour game that follows. My husband will come flying in the door from work, we throw together a quick bite to eat, and then race to make it to the field for 6:30.
These nights also mean that bedtime gets pushed late and the next morning is usually a struggle. He loves soccer and is learning so much from his experience, but asking me to do any more feels impossible.
At this point in my life, I’ve decided that I just don’t care. My son needs downtime at the end of each day just like I do. He will usually ask on our way home from daycare if there’s anywhere else we’re going — if there’s anything else to do.
When I respond with “nope, we’re just going home”, he’ll let out a sigh of relief and tell me that he needs his ‘relax time’.
This tells me that I might actually be doing things right.
Parenting doesn’t come with an instruction manual but there is an awful lot of noise out there to tell you what you should and shouldn’t be doing. Taken to heart and followed to the letter, you’ll end up in an endless spiral of mommy guilt — fearful of making a mistake and of the judgement of others.
The best advice I received as a new mother was to not listen to the advice of others — to learn by trial and error what works for me and my family.
When I actually heed this advice, the freedom it allows for me to mother in a way that makes sense for me and my child is affirmation that I’m moving in the right direction.
I’ve dropped the mommy guilt and exchanged it for the Lego Movie 2 on repeat with a side of chicken nuggets and ketchup.
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