To anyone who wants help in letting go of their SuperMom tendencies, I strongly recomment Ann Dunnewold’s fantastic book, Even June Cleaver Would Forget the Juice Box. She offers many tips on relaxing your impossible parenting standards ,as well as explanations on how our parenting culture got to be so perfectionistic in the firstplace.

Okay, so after venting, you see that I am not the perfect parent – but the one others would look to and say, ’see, she has it all together. Homeschooling children, adopted a sibling group of 3 special needs kids, stay at home parent, feeding her children all the healthy stuff…’ but you see, we don’t go to McDonald’s only because there are too many risk factors (I also have a severe egg allergy requiring an epi-pen, and a dairy protein intollerance) and my kids eat healthy because the other option is just too frightening, and my kids are homeschooled because the schools can’t teach them (11 yo is highly gifted, but also strong willed and doesn’t like other children unless they are gifted too. 8 yo can’t learn in a group. Intelligence is borderline one on one, but almost non-existant when you add a few kids to the mix. 4yo is severely overwhelmed in a group situation to the point of raging – she can’t filter out even the smallest noise or movement. She will be homeschooled, too, because she would be a nightmare to the school system and would never last an hour in the classroom (even according to multiple specialists who have been assessing her.) And 2yo will probably follow along due to health issues and MRI showing she is likely to be severely learning disabled.

And another stressor that most parents never have to deal with, in late summer, we were told that our children had a baby brother and we were first choice to adopt him. DH said we couldn’t do it, and so add telling my kids we had to decide to cause another loss for them as one of my stressors (they already have an older brother 8yo is upset we couldn’t adopt, and their birth parents who couldn’t raise them. This is something we technically could have done and decided against – there was no option on our part with their other losses.)

Oh well, just my vent as I search this vast internet for stress reducers. Sorry my post was so long.

Thanks for saying it out loud

I’m too tired to be a good anything anymore. Good mom, good wife, good person. I just wish I could be bad for awhile and have it be OK.

We live in an area of largely pretentious stay at home moms, or the highly successful, have a nanny, working moms. You would be amazed at the number of dirty looks I get when my son can’t be at every cub scout event, sporting event, or after-school/weekend school event because there just aren’t enough hours in the day and I am only 1 person.

It’s a good day if the kids are feed, bathed and home work is done before 9, much less the house cleaned or spending 2 hours at a 3rd graders activity 3-4 times a week. I have spent too much time trying to be that “perfect” mom. When I finally figured out that I really couldn’t do everything myself, my kids got happier.

My house may not be spotless; we do not participate in as many activities as the kids would like, and they eat out at least once a week, but they are happy and so are my husband and I.