Mommy Fails: The Blunders We’ve All Experienced
I wish there was a manual somewhere with clearly laid out responses to various parenting issues. But there isn’t, so we have to work things out for ourselves. Try as hard as you like, you won’t be the perfect parent. Time and time again, we each make the same mistakes our parents make and their parents before them. Here are three of the most common mommy fails.
1. You completely forgot about nap time
We’ve all done this. Something is going on. Maybe you’re at the zoo for the day or a family barbeque. Or maybe you’re just hanging around the house and it slips your mind. You blow right through nap time and before you know it, you’re a few hours away from bedtime.
Do you insist on a nap right away and risk pushing bedtime out? Or do you keep everyone awake (even though they’ll be miserable) until bedtime so tomorrow morning isn’t a disaster? There’s no right or wrong answer, unfortunately.
2. You sent your child to school sick
“Mommy, I’m sick…” Yeah, right. You aren’t falling for that one. You suspect your kid is playing sick to get out of that math test, but you know better. You pack her on the bus and go about your day, but get a call an hour later because your child is in the nurse’s office with a 104 degree fever. Whoops!
It happens. There’s not much you can do about it. I recommend doing a check over whenever your child complains of feeling ill (take temperature, check eyes/nose, feels hands, etc.), but sometimes a child is just going to try to play hooky and you’ll have to decide when it’s real.
3. You lost your cool
It’s easy to forget that children don’t misbehave to spite us (at least at young ages). There lapses in behavior are really just mistakes, for the most part. They didn’t run in the parking lot to make you angry; they did it because they got excited and forgot the rules. They didn’t damage the banister on purpose; it was a genuine accident because they don’t have years of balance practice.
When you lose your head and start yelling, no one is learning. No one. You aren’t’ making them see the error of their ways by screaming, just teaching them how to avoid the shouting. But none of us are perfect, and when our patience is really tested, we can lose it. Show your kids you are a bigger person by apologizing for your behavior.
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Written by Stephanie Parker from Sleepingbaby.com, inventor of the Zipadee-Zip
The motto for Sleeping Baby, makers of the Zipadee-Zip, is: “Inspiring Dreams One Night at A time,” and that, in a nutshell, is how it all started…with one little dream that has since become the Parker family’s reality. When Brett and Stephanie Parker’s daughter, Charlotte, was born, the feeling that welled up inside of them was indescribable; they never realized until first looking into those baby blues of hers that they were even capable of that kind of love.
When it was time to transition baby from swaddling, the Parkers tried every sleep sack on the market and every swaddle weaning trick they could find for nearly two weeks and nothing worked to get baby Charlotte to fall and stay asleep.
Stephanie became determined to restore sleep and sanity to their household and set out to find a solution that would soothe Charlotte’s startle reflex and provide her the cozy womb-like environment she loved so much but still give her the freedom to roll over and wiggle around in her crib safely. Out of sheer desperation and exhaustion, the Zipadee-Zip was born. The first Zipadee-Zip(R) Stephanie put together on her little sewing machine worked like magic!
To date tens of thousands of Zipadee-Zips have been sold and all from word-of-mouth marketing. It is so rewarding for the Parkers to see other parents and babies getting the sleep they both need and deserve!
For more information, visit sleepingbaby.com.
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