Parent Time

"I gave my kids cereal for dinner — again. Am I the world’s worst parent or what?"

The Lesson: Examine how you’re using guilt. Don’t judge your parenting skills by a single event, says Muriel Savikas, California child psychologist and author of Guilt Is Good! What Working Moms Need to Know. Instead, work on trying to figure out what’s behind the guilt. Perhaps you spend so many hours driving the kids to programs after school that the mere thought of chopping vegetables is laughable. Or maybe, unlike your own mom, you’re just not Betty Crocker. It’s important to admit the real issue, says Toronto parenting expert Alyson Schafer, author of Breaking the Good Mom Myth. Otherwise, she says, you’re just using your guilt as an excuse to keep from changing your behaviour. I don’t have to cook, you tell yourself, because I at least admit that I should be getting a healthy supper on the table.

The Plan: Take charge. Don’t let your guilt control you, Schafer says. Either use it to change (All right, all right, I’m heating up the stove!) or don’t (Hand out the cereal spoons, kids!). In each case, accept that you’re making a considered decision. And next time, don’t link your actions to the conclusion that you’re a bad mom. Rather than berating yourself, either lose the guilt or focus on the behaviour you want to change. “The solution,” Savikas says, “may be as simple as setting aside an hour to stop at the market once a week.”

"My kids spend so much time in front of the TV, they’re starting to call it Mommy!"

The Lesson: Use guilt to trigger exploration. Always ask yourself: What exactly is my guilt telling me about my behaviour? Sure, it’s cluing you in to the fact that the kids are ODing on screen time, but the deeper question is why. “If you’re using TV as a babysitter, that is what’s likely causing the guilt,” Savikas says. Other possible culprits: You’re failing to monitor content or fearing your kids’ reactions if you hold them to a schedule. Whatever the reason, buried beneath the bad feeling is something you want to change, and pinpointing it is a crucial step.

The Plan: Reassess your idea of entertainment. According to Schafer, TV guilt is a wake-up call, but it can also be tricky. It usually means that you don’t have enough time or energy to engage your kids, and that you need to take an inventory of the activities that are depleting you. And yet for all of us, flaking out in front of the tube is a delicious inactivity. “Beware ‘Momutainment,’” Schafer warns, referring to that feeling of needing to entertain our kids every second of every day. “We don’t,” she says. “It’s perfectly OK to snap off the TV and send them out to kick pine cones around the backyard.”

Originally published in Today's Parent, July 2007