I want to be a perfect mom.
I want to have infinite patience to handle all the ups and downs the day throws at me. But even though I try to exercise immense levels of self-control and not let their tantrums or insistent requests for snacks, hugs, or playing with them annoy me, they still drive me nuts!
Sometimes I just need a few moments to pee or take a shower in peace. Just a few… I’m not talking the entire day off! As much as I love them I have to admit there are moments I just want to hide or have them go away. Does that make me a bad mom?
No it doesn’t.
We are only human and sometimes we lose our sh*t!
The reality of life is there’s no such thing as a “perfect” mom. Every parent has his or her moments of frustration, impatience, and insensitivity. When you are exhausted and running on fumes, that only speeds up the time to explosion.
Every parent needs some alone time away from the kids to decompress. It is only human to feel this.
The only advice I can give is to not be so hard on yourself. When you start to feel an overwhelming sense of frustration building up, it’s best to take a few moments, step away from the situation and decompress. Sometimes just going into the bathroom or laundry room and counting to 10 can help calm you while you gather yourself. What you don’t want to happen is you blowing your top and yelling at your kids. We all know that yelling leads to more crying, yelling back and the cycle just perpetuates itself! After all, kids will be kids and sometimes they can get on your last nerve. What we want to avoid is freaking out and setting a negative chain reaction where the kids will freak out even more. Also, kids pick up on everything and learn from our queues so we always want to set a good example.
The best thing to do for you and your children is to take some time apart to recompose. Here are a few tricks to help you to gather yourself when you find your patience is running low:
- Go to an empty room, take a deep breadth, close your eyes and count to 10.
- Ask your partner to take over on parenting duties while you step away to recompose yourself.
- Step outside and grab a minute of fresh air before going back inside.
- Take a glass of water and just focus on drinking the water for a few moments.
- Turn on some soothing white noise, nature background music just to help calm everyone down.
Hopefully these quick tips can help you during your time of need. But don’t worry… you are not alone. No parent has infinite patience. We just love our kids so much we want what is best and it gets frustrating when they don’t listen. You are doing a great job and your children could not ask for a better mom than you.