Mom Guilt Is Actually Not Required

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In a world where moms are busy juggling between many (many) tasks, there is nothing better than having fewer battles to fight.

You have time to enjoy your kids, your family and your work. You can even pamper yourself and escape with your husband for a romantic getaway.

But the best thing about having to fight fewer battles is all the free time you have to spend on really appreciating being a mom.

Things have not always been this way though. When I first became a mom, I had doubts. Many doubts. Everything that had to do with my baby made me doubt myself, not only as a mother but also as a human being.

Was I feeding her enough?

Was I spending enough time with her?

What if she missed me when I was at work and stressed about it?

Should I use the pacifier or not?

Should I be a tough mom? A cool mom? Both?

Will she get spoiled if I carried her a lot?

So many questions haunted my already occupied mind of a working mom, and that’s how I came to join the never-ending cycle of mom guilt

Other moms welcomed me eagerly: You’ll see, it never stops.

So it seemed that with these stressful thoughts, I had officially become a mom.

The fun part about this guilt is that you can transport it anywhere you go. That is, if you enjoy the burden of being constantly stressed out.

Guilt does a good job in convincing you that you’ll eventually find a solution to your worries at one point (in the far far future), so much that it never leaves you at any point.

It’s your eternal best friend.

It’s your new you.

And to top it all, when I tried to find some answers on the Internet, I got to discover the Oh so famous mom wars. Every piece of advice that I came across, and that seemed to be pretty convincing at first, was very meticulously dissected by some moms who did not seem to agree with the direction that the article was taking.

Although at first these battles seemed confusing to me, after reading so many of them I had come to discover that there is no right answer in parenting.

Why would there be a right answer anyways?

Can you imagine how dull and boring our world would be if we all came to raise our kids in the exact same way?

Even better, can you imagine the battles we would have with our kids, if we expected them all to behave in the same way? After all, each child comes with a his own and unique set of strengths and weaknesses and assuming that all babies, toddlers and kids deserve to be treated the same way is the essence of parenting failures.

A relationship of a mom with each one of her kids is unique and deserves to be treated as such.

When my first child was born, I had a full-time job and had to deal with this reality. Many of my parenting decisions were taken based on the limited time that I had to spend with her. When my second child was born I was a stay-at-home mom, which meant longer hours to spend with him, but I also had to deal with two kids, so I adjusted my parenting approach to face this new reality.

With this in mind, I had to take a major decision in my life: guilt had no more place in my parenting, as it was a major distraction.

If I wanted to take control of my family, my kids and my parenting, I had to let go of the little thoughts that prevented me from enjoying life and the best that it had to offer my kids and me.

This approach is healthy, rewarding and fabulous. Even better, it’s very liberating, and I truly recommend other moms do the same.

From this moment onwards, I learned to enjoy my time with my kids.

Children go through different phases as they grow up, and they don’t need to be dealing with a frustrated or angry parent. Getting rid of “mom guilt” certainly doesn’t make parenting smooth sailing, but at least it makes it less stressful.

As I said, moms have enough of battles to deal with, so there is nothing better than freeing our minds from usefulness thoughts to enjoy the best that life has to offer.

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This post originally appeared on Confidential Mommy Talks 

Ghada Karam is a mom, a blogger and a marketer. She recently moved to Canada from Thailand where she used to live with her husband and kids.  She’s a little obsessed with gossiping about her kids. She blogs about the fun side of parenting: milestones, tantrums and communication! Passionate of collecting recipes (that she’ll never cook), fashion (that she can’t wear because of her kids) and kids craft (that she hopes will keep her kids quiet). Her work has also appeared on the Huffington Post, BLUNTmoms, BKK Kids, Expat Life in Thailand, Mamapedia, among others. You can follow her latest news at Confidential Mommy Talks, or get in touch with her on Facebook and Instagram.

 

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