Warning: This post contains extreme sarcasm. Do not read if you would be shocked that someone who professes to being a professional parent coach and champion supporter of moms everywhere (not to mention a great maker of tender, flaky pie crust) would be so bold as to publish such a snarky post. Read at your own risk!
It’s summer time, and the livin’ is easy! Really! With three long months stretched out before you, you, too, can have a guilt-filled summer with your kids! All you have to do is follow these easy steps. Ready?
- Don’t plan on any time alone this summer. Whatever you do, don’t pay for babysitting, trade with friends or relatives or do whatecver you can to get regular downtime. We wouldn’t want you to have a break where you can think your own thoughts without having to hear sibling squabbles or make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. This is such an important step for having a summer full of mom guilt that it’s the number one tip–so pay attention! No matter what, do NOT get any time alone on a regular basis. Follow this recommendation and you’ll be snapping at the kids (and counting down the days till school starts) in no time!
- Don’t expect your kids to contribute to the household in any way, shape or form. That way, you can be stretched to the max, and they can grow up to feel entitled to have others do everything for them. Besides, by NOT expecting your kids to help you, you’ll have less time for yourself (you know how temptations are; better to avoid them at all costs!). An additional benefit is that when your kids are older and married, you can feel even MORE guilt that they expect others to pick up their dirty underwear and put their dirty dishes away. Their sp0uses can roll their eyes at you and curse you for not having raised people who are responsible. Bonus!
- Don’t have any structure or schedule at all. It’s summer! Throw any semblance of a schedule out the window! Let the kids sleep till whenever. But not you–you need to set the alarm to have a hot breakfast on the table before your darlings even flutter their eyelids open. And by “hot breakfast” I’m NOT talking about toasted poptarts ! If you need ideas for delicious, nutritious, homemade breakfasts, Martha Stewart has plenty. And no fair cheating. If you make french toast , you need to make sure you make if from bread you’ve made yourself. If you’re going to cheat, use store-bought eggs, rather than ones from your hens.
- Don’t monitor screen use. At all. They want to use the Wii all day? Let ‘em! Texting during dinner? Sure! Playing video games for hours on end? Why not?! TV and computers were made to be used all day, every day, all summer long. Just because you were stuck with an Etch-A-Sketch (oops–you’re probably not as old as I am and don’t even know what one of those is!), don’t thwart your children’s desire to stay plugged in. Really, I don’t have to tell you this, do I? The more your kids aren’t using their imaginations, playing outdoors, interacting with people in an actual 3-D reality, the less impulsive they’ll be and the better they’ll be able to regulate their behavior. That doesn’t sound like something that would contribute to mom guilt, now does it? Just don’t use their screen time as alone time for you, what EVER you do!
- Don’t plan ahead to what kind of summer you and your family would like to have. Definitely don’t sit down and ask each person what they’d like to do for fun this summer. If you slip and do this, you’ll be opening a can of worms, trust me. Your kids will probably say things like “go to Disneyland” and “buy me any toy I want.” No, far better to just let each day unfold however it does. That way, the summer will end and you can all look back and say, “Glad THAT’S over.” Make your mottoe, “Just Get Through It.” Survival, baby. No thriving here. No use having your kids make some good memories of playing outside, going swimming, participating in the summer reading challenge at the library or learning how to cook. Also, we wouldn’t want YOU to plan ahead to what would help YOU enjoy summer, now would we? Being proactive and feeling mom guilt don’t go together very well. Remember that.
So, are you ready to take the plunge into a guilt-filled summer? I realize that these five tips are pretty overwhelming and require a lot of energy from you, but anything worth doing is worth doing well! If you find yourself struggling to implement all of them, at the very least do tip #1: don’t plan on any alone time this summer. This is the single most important thing you can do to ensure that you are filled with guilt.
Happy (guilt-filled) summer!
Love it or hate it, most parents use some form of time-out with their kids. It’s in the popular culture thanks to TV nanny shows. It’s also been touted as the perfect “what-to-do-if-you-don’t-want-t0-spank” parenting technique. In a sense, it’s become the ”one size fits all” answer for what to do when your son yells at you or your daughter refuses to put her dishes away, or both your son and daughter are arguing and won’t stop. My dirty secret? I don’t “do” time out. Relax–I don’t spank! I don’t consider myself a lax parent (and nowhere near a perfect parent), and giving up time out has resulted in fewer power struggles between me and my kids . It’s also help us say goodbye to a lot of the drama that used to ensue in our house. But it wasn’t always this way. I have a long and storied history with time-out…
Recently, I double-dog dared my newsletter subscribers to do something that is hard for many people: to name 3 of their strengths. Many of you reading this blog post may already BE on my newsletter list and were one of the ones who wrote to me and said, “This is HARD!” One of the reasons I was so compelled to do this is that I’ve noticed that the strengths-based movement has taken hold in schools and businesses, but is lagging behind in parenting. And when I say lagging, I mean SERIOUSLY lagging. Just look at all the books on “mom guilt” as part of the evidence that moms are hard on themselves. It’s like we’ve finally come clean that motherhood is hard and that we compare ourselves to others, but we don’t know how to get out of this emotional quicksand.