Read this if you’re having a BAD PARENTING DAY

Ugh. You know those days right?

You had these great plans for the day and then the kid’s are whining, you’re getting irritated, they end up screaming they hate you and it just feels like the worse.

We had one of these days recently and I felt like I was just done. I didn’t want to fix things and connect with them and help them manage stress – I wanted them to leave me alone.

I felt rubbish because I felt like I should know better. I felt like I talk about stress in kids so much, I should be more compassionate and be able to support them. But I didn’t feel like being compassionate. I felt hurt, I felt triggered and I felt like ‘why do I even bother?’.

I wondered if I was an imposter. Talking about supporting kids with stress and creating more calm and more connection and there was us, having the worse day ever. You see other mindful parents sharing these practices never share their bad days – they share about bad moments and then how they turned it all around by practicing yoga together or doing some incredible thing. They don’t share that it’s actually really hard sometimes.

I was not the parent I wanted to on this bad day. I felt like a really rubbish parent, emphasised by the fact my eldest was saying how awful I was. It made me feel like ‘you want awful, I’ll give you awful.’

The day sucked.

I made an effort to say I love you and always will. And I was saying this out loud to them as much as I was reminding myself. I had the song Billy Joe (Greenday) shared from his childhood days in my head – Look for love, look for love 🎵

In this moment where I felt so low and I felt like I was having the worse parenting day ever, I wasn’t being the parent I wanted to be…. it made me realise….

The posts I have been seeing on social media have all been about being doing X instead of Y, to be the calm, to never say this and to never do that.

I had been putting so much pressure on myself to do everything the right way.

There hadn’t been room for bad days.

Because I should know how to make the day better. I can fix this.

That night, I sat and meditated on this.

I realised I had to make peace with the fact it had been a bad day. I accepted that I didn’t want to turn to gratitude and see the good. The day had sucked. Instead I focused on self-compassion and acceptance. Reminding myself that even though the day had sucked, I still love and accept myself. I am still a good parent and my child doesn’t actually hate me.

I let tears flow, and allowed myself to just be.

The next day, I felt refreshed. Like a reset button had been hit and we were all able to have a better day and turn to the practices I share about so often.

I wasn’t an imposter, I was just a mum having a bad day and that was okay.

Bad days are normal.

What if we stopped looking for everything we are doing wrong? What is we stopped judging our parenting ability on our child’s behaviour in stressful moments? What if we stopped trying to turn to a quick fix?

If you’re looking for a parent who always has their stuff together and want to learn calming practices from someone who always has calm kids, that is understandable…. I wish you well.

But if you want to work with someone who knows what it’s like to feel absolute rubbish some days, to have kids who are WILD, someone who has a fair share of stress in their life, someone who’s not waking up each morning to a beautiful sea view with their healthy breakfast and sharing how they just found their child meditating on their own in their room peacefully……

Someone who is more likely to wake up with drool on their face and their youngest shouting “Mummy, I did a poo, come wipe my bum.”

That’s me 🙋🏻‍♀️

I won’t pretend to have everything together all the time and I certainly won’t judge you either.

I do however know how to bring back some balance. I know how to sit with uncomfortable emotions without trying to rush to change them. I know how to accept the good and the bad. And I know that no matter how much we want to be calm and connected parents, sometimes we just have to accept that we are human and perfect parents don’t actually exist.

Even the parent with the peaceful view and their lovely breakfast and kid meditating – they have their struggles too. They just might not want to share them. It’s easier not to share them. None of us want to open ourselves up to criticism, especially with parenting because it feels like one of the most important things we’ll ever do. Of course we want to be seen as doing it all right.

So I wanted to be really honest in this post, to share that bad days happen, and that’s okay.

I was thinking of recording a meditation for these kind of days. Let me know if that would be helpful to you in the comments below.

Hope this post helped you to feel not so alone. It’s not easy. Tomorrow is a new day.