Who Made Up This Rule Anyway?
One of the best questions to ask yourself on your quest to Drop the Mom Guilt is “Who Made up this rule anyway?”
We have a Mommy User Manual about a three feet thick of all of our expectations of ourselves in order to qualify as a “good Mom”. Do we not? Where did all that crap come from in the first place? This is the work of sifting and sorting through our conditioned conscious and unconscious beliefs. Where did we read that we don’t want to be our baby’s “sleep prop” so we’re so freaked out at bedtime that we’re doing it wrong and they will be scarred for life? They’ll never be able to self soothe themselves to sleep without us and we’ll have to move into their college dorm with them someday to be sure they can get to sleep! Of course that sounds rationally ridiculous when you say it out loud but such thoughts are swimming in our heads all the time giving us added layers of stress and worry on top of our already difficult job of getting our baby to sleep.
When you notice the feeling of guilt, trace back to what thought (probably a should or should not thought) caused it and then question that belief. I shouldn’t let my kids eat cereal for dinner. again. I shouldn’t? Why not? Am i not 9 months pregnant and at least they are eating something and for goodness sake, maybe i should just enjoy the autonomy they are showing at being able and willing to fix themselves some food? Maybe. Who made up the menu rules in that mommy manual? That might be the biggest chapter. Yes, nutrition is important, of course. But stressing about it to the point of guilt and shame is never useful (as i point out in all of these blogs!)
There are literally hundreds of parenting books etc that tell us what to do and not do but if we try to take on every (usually well-intentioned) piece of advice to the point of making it all moral doctrine, we will drive ourselves crazy. So take them one at a time and assess where it’s not serving you to follow that rule. Who Made up that rule anyway? And after you’ve answered that question, the next is “and do I really WANT to follow that rule?” You get to decide for yourself if you WANT to! You don’t HAVE to do anything! Even if the answer to the first question was that your mom made that rule. That’s the way you grew up. Well, you are the Mom now! You can make up your own rules! You’re welcome!! Enjoy!
