All single parents and yes, all parents despite their circumstances, will experience guilt at some time or another. You should not waste another moment of your precious time feeling guilty.
Maybe you feel guilty because your child does not have a two-parent home or because you can’t provide as much financially for him or her. Or, you may have had a stressful day and yelled at your kid or let him or her see you behaving at less than your best. You may have feelings of ‘if only’ you had done such and such, your situation or child’s behavior or grades or whatever would be so much better.
Even worse, you probably have friends or coworkers who appear to be ‘super parents’ who spout off the latest parenting wisdom which you, of course, are not following and therefore, your childern are destined to a life of poverty or worse. Their kids are in a variety of extracurricular activities and their homes are immaculate and beautifully decorated. While they may not tell you in so many words, you can sense their disapproval of your parenting and lifestyle.
So now, you are feeling guilty. Chances are, you are a great parent, and doing the very best you can under the circumstances. How do you stop the feelings of guilt?
First, remember that you are not perfect. Neither are other parents despite some of their apparent shows of perfection. You can only do your best when parenting your kids.
Second, you do not have a crystal ball. You make your decisions about your life and parenting with the best information that is available at the time. If some of those decisions in retrospect were not good, do not be hard on yourself. Just learn from the experience and move on.
The best parenting advice is to follow your heart when making decisions about the kids. Know that your choices may not always follow the popular wisdom and that’s OK. If you have chosen what you consider to be the right course of action at the time, then you have no reason to feel guilty if things do not work out quite the way you have envisioned.
Remember that your parents probably made plenty of mistakes, and you turned out to be a good citizen and love your folks despite their flaws. Your kids love you, too, and will understand that you are not perfect as they get older.
Learn to forgive yourself. We are usually harder on ourselves than anyone else. Give yourself some room to fail occasionally. You need the emotional energy that you could invest in feeling guilty about your supposed mistakes to parent your kids and take care of yourself. The gift of an emotionally healthy parent is the best one that you can give to your children.
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