I read something tonight that fueled the idea for my next blog. A mum on facebook was asking for advice about weaning her 6 month old. Loads of friends gave a bunch of different words of advice and encouragement. One ruffled my feathers a little. It was along the lines of: "I fed my child a variety of foods since they were young so now they love to eat all their fruits and vegetables." That's great I thought....for you. So for those of us who find it difficult to get their 2 year old to consume anything remotely green, we feel like failures. Which got me to thinking, everyone is always going on about the "correct" way of doing things. No more than two hours of TV, make sure they eat this many foods from this many food groups, if you don't breastfeed for 6 months there's something wrong with you, your child is two and he doesn't know his ABC's??, your 3 year old is still not potty trained, that child is really too old to have a dummy/pacifier, oh and my personal favourite: if you had an epidural you didn't really suffer during labour.
There's some really strict rules like: no cows milk until 12 months. So does that mean if you give your child who is 11 months and 29 days milk he will be sick, but somehow a day later he'll be fine???
When we achieve something we feel great, but if somehow we fall a little bit short we punish ourselves, too much. Honestly some days it is just about survival, getting through that day, and then I'll get to the next one. We put too much pressure on ourselves to have the perfect scrapbook, to be the perfect parent who never raises their voice. It's unrealistic to expect your two year old to stop doing something right away the first time you tell them
no, it's going to take a few tries. It's not realistic to imagine that we can live up to the world's really high standard of what the "perfect child" should be like. So mom, go get a pedicure and give yourself some credit...you are doing an amazing job.