Guilt Free Parenting: 8 ways to avoid the guilt trap
By Leslie Petruk. Posted on .
We've all experienced it...the dreaded parenting guilt. You blame yourself whenever you see your child fail or if they are unhappy or struggling. You beat yourself up after you lose your cool when your child misbehaves, you wonder how you have failed your child when they come home with a bad test grade, and you are sure iti is your fault that your child hurt themselves when under your care. There's always something to feel guilty about when you are a parent!
Then, there are those teachers, friends and family members who don't help matters. They say things like, "he just can't seem to keep his hands to himself, is something going on at home?", or "she doesn't act like that when she's with me-you need to stop letting her manipulate you like that", or the infamous "well intentioned", "how/why do you put up with that, if he were my child that wouldn't be tolerated!". Judgements from those around us only increases the sense of guilt and shame that parents often already carry. If you have a child with special needs of any kind, whether autism, adhd, depression, bi-polar, anxiety or anything else, the stress and shame are only magnified. You are in public and your child acts out or starts throwing a tantrum and you get "those looks". You know the look I'm talking about - the "why don't you get your kid under control?" look. I've actually seen adults shake their heads with disapproval or go so far as to intervene and tell a child to stop screaming or crying, as though they have the right to input their parenting wisdom.
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Then there are the days when your sweet child turns into a toddler who has learned the word "no!". Or when you hit the teen years, a child who is satisfied by absolutely nothing you do or say one day and the next, you are the greatest parent that ever lived.
