Parenting guilt - We all have it.

My parents have just left and headed back to the island as we won’t be spending Christmas with them this year, sad face! They have done it again and truly spoiled my children, despite every year telling them to scale it back – it falls on deaf ears. I know they do it because they feel guilty for not being there at times but if you ask my children about what they remember about Christmas with the grandparents, they would talk of the time papa took them for a drive around the neighbourhood pretending they were doing the isle of mull rally or taking them to see the Christmas lights at the Botanic’s than all the presents they put under the tree. Then my dad said something to my husband made me really think…

On one of his drives with my husband, my dad spoke of the guilt of not being able to give me everything my friends had when I was growing up and I was shocked because I THOUGHT I had everything. I never once growing up thought how unfair it was that my friends got more stuff than me because I had all that stuff too. Of all the things I felt growing up, being underprivileged was not one.

My parents worked hard, they did this, so we could have a good life and as a child I felt our life was good. I had the same clothes as my friends, I had food in the fridge and our house was clean, organised and always beautifully decorated. We had holiday's every year and at Christmas the tree was always bursting with gifts. These are the things my dad thought were important, why? Well as a parent that’s what we do, don’t we? We worry we aren’t enough! We want our children to feel the same as everyone else, we feel guilt when we can’t and forget about the more important things like time together.

My best friend’s dad lived in another country, it was exciting because once a year she got to go stay with him in his treetop house in the Amazon, but she didn’t get to see him often between those visits. This was the time before regular email and mobiles so her communication with her dad was an email a month when he headed into a city internet café, miles away from his home.

My dad came home at 5 pm every night, he ate tea with us, did our homework, tucked us up and in the morning, he got us ready for school- every single day! I know for a fact that my friend would have given up all her “stuff” to have her dad do that.

The days my mum made our favourite dinner of all the beige food from the freezer, a freezer picnic she called it, we would snuggle down all together and watch the TV were the days my mum was feeling broken. She felt like she was failing but we thought it was the best thing ever, chicken nuggets and cartoons? WIN! She felt like she wasn’t doing a good job, yet her children, us, we thought she was the best mum in the world.

Some mornings we wake up and we aren’t the great parent we hope to be, sometimes we are. That is life, we are only human, but we are so hard on ourselves that we don’t always see the smiles on the kids faces on those days that have broken us. Most feelings of maternal guilt can be grouped under the heading ‘Simply Not Being Good Enough’. According to a survey by baby care product company NUK, 87 per cent of mothers feel guilty at some point, with 21 per cent feeling this way most or all the time.

Ah yes. Guilt, we all know that feeling, it’s the mix up of our expectations and reality. ‘Maternal guilt’ has many different levels and let’s not forget the crazy biological and hormones that make us woman a slave to her children. Then there is our work, housework, relationships and we have all the ingredients for an anxiety cake.

As our children grow the anxiety doesn’t go away, it doesn’t lessen and according to my parents it gets bigger. My parents believed they were responsible for my happiness, that they were failing if I wasn’t or that is was their fault when I made bad choices or for my anxieties. They questioned what they should have done, when looking back at my teens I saw that they were everything and more. They gave me the things I needed to grow, their love and time.

The funny thing is as I was growing up, I often thought I wasn't good enough. That I was failing my parents – it was a great source of my worries growing up. I didn’t like being told off, I didn’t like upsetting them and tried my best to always be “good” (still do) and I held onto a lot of shame when I did any of those things I tried so hard to avoid. I never wanted to disappoint, and then I find out my dad didn’t want to disappoint me, that this was a worry he still carried with him, and after the little talk he had, it become clear that neither of us were disappointed, in fact the very opposite. We were all we could be for each other and I think that makes me love him more.

Makes you think doesn’t it?