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Make Peace with Yourself
Guilt. As a parent, you live and deal with it every day. The guilt in choosing to stay home. The guilt in choosing to work. The guilt in not packing a Food Pyramid–approved, environmentally friendly, high-fructose-corn-syrup-free lunch. The guilt in popping in a DVD instead of taking your daughter outside to play. The guilt of letting her stay up too late on a school night or watch a movie that’s rated PG-13 instead of G. The choices we have in front of us can be overwhelming, at best, and the return on this guilt investment, underwhelming, to say the least.
That’s why two “real” mothers and the authors of I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids came up with some simple suggestions on how to deal with that guilt. What’s great about these six easy steps is that not only are they helpful for parents, but they can also translate into insightful advice for your daughters as well.
6 Easy Steps Toward Making Peace
with Your Choices
As one mom in Boston told us, “I finally realized you can have it all, just not all at once.”
In other words, you can’t do everything right now. As you’ve doubtless been telling your own children (or will be telling them soon), you need to learn how to make good choices for yourself and accept them. The goal is to create a good (if sometimes imperfect) situation and accept it for what it is. The six steps that follow will help you achieve that goal.
1. Realize that expectations can influence your choices. Make sure you’re making conscious choices based on what you really want, not what is expected of you.
2. Consider what you don’t want. By eliminating what is not right, what is right becomes clear.
3. Go back to your core principles and values. Use these to drive your choices.
4. Consider why you’re feeling overloaded. It may not be just one big thing; all of those little things can add up to chaos. Making a few small changes might bring big relief.
5. Let go of the pressure to do it all and to do it all perfectly. Sometimes, it’s OK for things to be “good enough.”
6. Once you make a choice, make a rule not to second-guess yourself. Deciding to make peace with your choices will help keep you from being so swayed by others (and yourself).
Excerpted from I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids by Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile, Chronicle Books, 2007
articles by subject
Here’s the full list of topics and articles our advocates have contributed. We’ll be adding more soon, so please check back.
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Dolls & Playtime
The Real Difference Between Boys and Girls
Friends, Family & Values
Kids and Materialism: Advice for Parents
Saying No to Friendly Temptation
When Good Friends Are a Bad Influence
Emotional Health
3 Steps to Better Emotional Health
6 Easy Steps Toward Making Peace with Your Choices
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