Mum Guilt

If you don’t know what this is (although I think most of us are familiar! 😂) it is the guilt we fill ourselves with for worrying whether we are doing a good enough job. Are we playing with our kids enough, should they be watching the amount of tv they do, etc, etc. I’m not sure my parents’ generation went through this quite as much as we are?! Mum Ann Kennedy correct me if I’m wrong!

And from the friends and mums I speak to, mum-guilt seems to prey on all types, regardless of whether you’re a stay-at-home-mum, full or part-time working mum. I think we all go through times of feeling we are not fulfilling this image of the perfect mum.

Well, perfectionism is an illusion, it doesn’t exist..nope... so no point chasing it and my life is richer for living this way.

As for having the perfect mealtime and the guilt that comes when we don’t, I blame social media for all the Instagram accounts of mums serving the perfect meals, promoting ‘clean eating’ and if we are already feeling inadequate and exhausted, this stuff can really affect us.

I used to stress out at mealtimes that everything had to be made from scratch for my kids, even worrying what friends would think if they came round and I just gave them fish fingers even though I was too exhausted to cook anything else. I’m happy to say I no longer give myself a hard time about this and don’t think twice about serving freezer tapas when need be 😁. I try my best to give my kids a well-balanced diet but sometimes there is no time to do this and I don’t beat myself up anymore. My kids wanted to go to McDonald’s this week and we did. Not a vegetable in sight. Ok, I know what the picture above looks like...my son knowing how to rip back the Happy Meal and use the base as a tray and the top as a crown *may* suggest I go more than I let on here...

As The Feeding Coach - Eliana Cline said in one of her Facebook posts recently (‪and what sparked me to write this) was her words, ‘let’s do real life, let’s support each other’. Nuff said.

#Allaboutthebalance #happylittleeaters #mumguilt #guiltfreeliving #normalmums #happymumhappychild #lifeisbusy