How to get rid of guilt
OUR ENDLESS QUEST FOR PERFECTION ISN’T DOING OUR CHILDREN TOO MANY FAVOURS, WRITES LAUREN PRATT
YOU don’t pack the perfect lunch. You were late to pick them up from school. You work too much. You don’t work enough. You don’t volunteer at the school. You exercised instead of spending time with them. You didn’t read them a book before bed. You let them eat sandwiches for dinner. Parents, especially mothers, find all sorts of ways to feel guilty about not doing enough, not providing enough, or not being enough.
YOU don’t pack the perfect lunch. You were late to pick them up from school. You work too much. You don’t work enough. You don’t volunteer at the school. You exercised instead of spending time with them. You didn’t read them a book before bed. You let them eat sandwiches for dinner.
Parents, especially mothers, find all sorts of ways to feel guilty about not doing enough, not providing enough, or not being enough.
When the question was asked on social media about what parents feel guilty about, a torrent of heartache poured out.
“I now have a special-needs child who should have been looked at two years ago but I just kept putting it off and now I am so guilt-ridden that I have just left it too long and wish I just didn’t think it would all get better,” one mother wrote.
Another shared this: “At the moment I’m feeling exceptionally guilty for not being able to drop the kids at school like I always do because I am on early shifts. Even though it’s something that I have been striving for, I feel like it’s at their detriment (it’s absolutely not but I can’t help it).”
Edge Hill’s Michelle De Bonis, the mother of two girls Stella, 9, and Natalie, 5, struggles with guilt, just like so many other parents.
The single parent says sticking to her values – notably teaching her children about reducing their impact on the environment and creating an “authentic upbringing” where devices are not the priority – keeps the guilt at bay.
“You need to be clear about your values,” she says. “Try to be clear and don’t beat yourself up if you can. We try to be everything to everybody. That can be hard.
“I really feel guilty when I give in though.
“The kids will say: ‘I’m really hungry, can I have a packet of chips?’ Or they will ask for a bottle of water and I will say: ‘No, we don’t buy bottled water.’ But when I am tired, stressed or running out of time, I do give in to those things.
“It’s hard. Sometimes I do just want to sit in front of the
WOMEN ESPECIALLY GET CAUGHT UP IN THE ILLUSION OF BEING ABLE TO DO IT ALL AND DO IT ALL PERFECTLY. WHAT WE DON’T TAKE NOTE OF IS THE RESEARCH THAT TELLS US THAT THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR IN RAISING EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY AND RESILIENT CHILDREN IS TO BE A ‘GOOD ENOUGH’ PARENT BECAUSE THE WORLD IS IMPERFECT REGARDLESS OF WHAT WE SEE ON OUR SOCIAL MEDIA FEEDS PSYCHOLOGIST NIA BARNES
TV or buy them a McDonald’s slushie.”
Getting the work-life balance right was also a challenge for Michelle. After becoming a mother, she eschewed full-time work for part-time hours. The lawyer is now studying a masters degree in family law with a joint end goal of becoming a sole practitioner and continuing to be a hands-on mother.
“I would feel guilty if I had a full-time job but I would also feel guilty if I didn’t work, so I worked in a part-time job,” she says.
“I would feel like I was not giving everything to my job and not giving everything to my kids. I am studying to go out on my own so I can do the
hours I want. I want to be there for school holidays and rather than have them in vacation care, I want to do things with them, like take them camping.”
Michelle says for a long time she felt guilty about putting her own needs first.
“If you’re in a situation, such as a relationship or a job that is just not working or it’s making you miserable, then it’s OK to walk away. Kids will adjust.”
Where many people may believe guilt is a destructive, useless emotion, psychologist Nia Barnes at Mind Matters Cairns says it actually serves a purpose.
“When viewed from an evolutionary perspective, guilt’s purpose has been to help the ‘guilty’ adjust their behaviour in order to remain in the group,” she says.
“Prehistorically your chances of survival were much slimmer if you were not a part of a clan.
“Guilt is also often tied to empathy. We feel guilty when we think we’ve done the wrong thing because we know how it would feel to be on the receiving end and again, we adjust our behaviour. Therefore guilt has a purpose.”
Nia says as society has changed, so have the things we feel guilt about.
“For example, my family immigrated here from Greece,” she says. “My parents’ parental goals were to keep a roof over our heads, food on the table and to give us an education.
“Meeting those goals meant that they did not feel guilty about working long hours because they knew that they were doing their best for our benefit and yes, there were many afternoons in front of the TV for my sister and I while they got on with providing the necessities.
“They didn’t feel guilty because they were comparing growing up in Australia with growing up in a poor village in Greece.
“What we compare our lives with, however, is a very different kettle of fish.”
Many parents feel the pressure of social media’s influence and what doesn’t help are posts showcasing new research about what they believe constitutes good parenting, according to Nia.
“From the moment we fall pregnant to the moment our children graduate ... we compare ourselves with those around us and strive to reach perfection,” she says.
“Women especially get caught up in the illusion of being able to do it all and do it all perfectly. What we don’t take note of is the research that tells us that the most important factor in raising emotionally healthy and resilient children is to be a ‘good enough’ parent because the world is imperfect regardless of what we see on our social media feeds.
“Our children will be faced with a number of frustrations in their lives, being a good enough mother or father teaches our children to be patient, to be flexible and to set achievable goals. There will be times when we can’t be there for them in the way that we would like to be.
“So when mother’s guilt takes hold because we think we’re doing the wrong thing by our children, we would do well to remember that we are busy focusing on providing the necessities and teaching valuable lessons by being good enough.”