4 nurturing things you don’t have to feel guilty about
When you have your first child, you want to do everything right. I remember with my first baby girl (I now have three) I always thought: she’s my blank slate; I’m going to do everything right with her. So I put a lot of thought into her first meals, I tried to find a balance that would help her develop her taste palette the best way possible.
I also came up with a bunch of things I said I would never be allowed to do again now that I was a mother. Like walking through my house wine glass in hand. Something I would do regularly but was rather chaotic. A mother should radiate control and organization. And any time someone offered my kid some candy I would look horrified. Sugar; the thought alone…
Three kids later and I’ve strayed a bit from my original plan. Wait scratch that. I’m drifting away from it. And you probably have been too so how about we make a pact to stop feeing guilty when things don’t go the way you initially planned.
1. In your bed
My first born hardly ever slept in her own crib and so now (almost 8 years later) she still claims our bed as her own. So I planned to be different with my other two which worked fine until they realized how cozy and fun our big bed is. And until we all started watching The Voice in our bed and so any form of sexy time with your hubby has been brutally possessed by family time involving chocolate and chips in bed.
And so I have surrendered and realized that pretty soon there will be times when they’ll lock up their bedroom doors and diaries from me. And so until then, I’m going to enjoy it as much as I can.
2. Candy
For a very long time I attempted to raise one of my kids in a sugar free environment. I introduced her to rice cake and pretended it was some kind of cookie, muesli was just as good (or even better than) cruesli and all her juices came from biological grocery stores. Until suddenly I said to myself: what am I doing? This would mean that any time a kid at school would be handing out treats my daughter would have to say no. How unfair would that be? Look, coca cola is a no go (although every so often I might let them have one small sip out of my can) and you’ll never find bags filled with candy at our house but to say they’re never allowed to have candy is definitely not the case. So let it go, you don’t want them going crazy if they’re ever in the presence of sugar right?
3. Throw it out
I once read a column from a married couple who, as soon as their kids were fast asleep, would go on a treasure –toy hunt and fill trash bags with their kids toys and dump it in the trash. And no one ever noticed. Sounds like a great plan to me. For some reason it seems as though my kids’ collection grows every week. So with the motto ‘what they don’t know won’t hurt ‘em’, I might just start these monthly treasure toy hunts too.
4. Throwing out their arts and crafts
This is still somewhat of a prickly issue. Especially when my kids find their drawings in the trash. “Mom, I think something went horribly wrong. You accidentally threw my drawing in the trash.” I’m too much of a coward to tell them I did it on purpose and so I try to do it covertly. Cause their arts and crafts might even be worse than throwing out their toys. The pile just keeps getting bigger and with all respect for my kids and their artsy teachers, they aren’t all master pieces. Plus, I have three kids and I could opt to keep them all in boxes but we live in the 21st century so here’s a solution: take a picture. That way you have the memory and it won’t take up a ton of space. Same goes for mothers day gifts by the way but the thought of having to get rid of those too…
