What great words those are in the title of this blog. I wish I could take credit for them but credit must go to Dr Sue Whitcombe Chartered Psychologist http://familypsychologysolutions.org/dr-sue-whitcombe/ . A light bulb moment for me to hear them yesterday.
How they resonated.
On a daily basis I hear grandparents say things such as, ” I must have been a terrible parent to be estranged from my son/daughter.”
Outsiders, who have never experienced separation from a family member, look at you accusingly, or just come out and say it, “You must have done something terrible for this to have happened to you.”
And so as parents, we constantly question our parenting skills or lack of them.
As we know being a parent has no manual, we learn on the job and hopefully learn by our mistakes. And in my case there were and still are many of those.
There is no such thing as a perfect parent, there are no Supermen or Superwoman, just parents trying to do their best.
We often fall short, we don’t get it all right, but does that actually matter?
Surely children need to know that we are not perfect, that we do fail at things. It’s called life.
For those who continually beat themselves up, need to post those 3 words on their fridge.
We are all, “good enough parents.”
Jane