mining through parenting

Yesterday I forgot the world.

I left my son in his father's hands, the house in my husband's hands and I just sat down and read and read and read.

Whenever, my pup spotted me he came running into my arms wanting some mummy attention and truth be said I did feel guilty when that happened. However, I needed this time and I couldn't function for the day.

The book - My Sisters' Keeper by Jodi Picoult - is wonderful and I am not talking just the storyline. In between the lines you can see the pain, frustration, insecurities of us parents. Parenting at the end of the day is worse than a minefield. From the moment you get to know you are expecting, every decision you make is bound to be made with the childs' well being in mind. The problem is that this isn't as easy as it seems because parenting has so many faces.
Should I breastfeed or not, should I use gentle discipline or not, should I use something in between? All the pros and cons can be evaluated, you can read a million books but ultimately parenting is a journey you have to take alone. Every one of us has to find their own path but this path is most of the time like groping in darkness. Trying to find, understand, make sure that our children are brought up healthy and balanced when we ourselves are not.

This book summed it up perfectly and I thought-we all do the best we can or what we believe is best and maybe a lot of people might think we are not doing it well but we all have our ways and that's ok. All we have to do is remember when things get thick is that we are doing our best and need to step back and breathe because this is not a competition on how to bring up a child or a test its about loving them and hearing them and listening to them.

May you have a great weekend