Posted on Wednesday, 24th March 2010 by Catherine

If you believe yourself to be a perfect parent you might want to stop reading now.

I don’t believe in perfect parenting.  I think what makes parents who we are is a bunch of little imperfections. Parenting shoes are some of the hardest and most humbling shoes we wear.

We mean well but sometimes don’t do well.

Sometimes we are mean and we don’t want to be, other times we are mean and we intend to be to get a point or lesson across.

We make mistakes probably every single day yet we don’t always own our mistakes.

We try to set a good example but sometimes hear our own words being repeated and they don’t sound nice coming from our children.

We set limits and create routines for our children but often crave these things in our own life.

We try to make it “all better” with a hug but occasionally we hurt to our core when our child is hurting.

We may have judged others parenting choices without thinking about what we would have done in that same situation.

We smile when we want to cry to show our children strength.

We laugh at their “not so funny” antics to help build their self-esteem.

We slack a bit and feed them cereal for dinner (more than once).

Occasionally we “wish” for a stage or an age to pass but then crave it once we realize they grow up way to fast.

We fib to our kids to get our way or to avoid that dreaded “bouncy house” activity.

We make time to read to our kids when it is the last thing we want to do.

We force them to sit with us and read to them when it is the last thing they want to do.

We kiss dirty toes to make the scrap better and don’t even think twice about where those toes have been.

We have eaten more meals on the go that we care to admit.

We give and give and give until we have nothing left, then we go to bed and wake up and do it all again.

We sit through endless baseball, soccer, lacrosse, hockey games freezing our bums off cheering for our children.

Occasionally we don’t mean what we say and we don’t get around to saying what we mean often enough.

You see, we are never perfect parents because we are human.  We are imperfect beings fumbling along in this crazy world.  We love our kids but we make mistakes and we are far from perfect. As long as we are giving our best most of the time that is all our children can ask of us and in return that is really all we ask of them.

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