to think it's high time somebody started an "I'm an imperfect mother" thread on here? Jeeez the number of perfectly perfect mums on here atm is quite scary

[emkana]

Okay I'll start

I'm not a perfect mother because

I lose my temper
I let them watch x factor and the cube on a Saturday night, and don't even read them a bedtime story after
I've taken them out of school for holidays

I spent the morning screaming at them. It happens every f*ckin school day.

Great posts Gerroff and Pagwatch.

I am far from a perfect parent, but I do my best and I like to think that despite lapses when my DS's have had too many sweets/too much TV or I have shouted (never swear at them bizarrely, despite having a potty mouth normally, have no idea how that has happened btw, and can see how it could happen once in a while) my boys will grow up knowing that they are loved,cared for and respected and will respect others.

There is a big difference, I think, between benign neglect and verbal abuse, not showing that your DC are loved and respected.

Parenthood is a massive struggle and I don't think have ever met anyone who is a perfect parent, self-proclaimed or otherwise.

now i must be a really bad parent as i think giving cereal is to be commended for a snack - then again i have done something right as my toddlers cereal of choice is bran flakes or all bran!

tbh NOT swearing at children under 10 is a doddle compared to later!

Notanotter - bran flakes! Toddlers! How did you manage that!

Lizzy - I swear like a trooper in DD;s hearing, which is not obviously the best thing to do, however like you I have never sworn at her.

Shit!
Mine are 5 and 3, here was I feeling smug about so far not swearing

I think DD tried my patience far more when she was a toddler and had her fingers in the sudocrem etc, than now when she is 13. Even though she can be exasperating and has to be told to do something at least 5 times before she does it, at least I can trust her not to scribble on the walls/gouge my eyeshadows/smear vaseline all over the telly.

Well, I think so, anyway

best of a badlot geroffmyland
I only buy weetabix,meusli,shredded wheat,shreddies,porridge and bran flakes

Gerroff, I am finding my 2 most challenging atm, it's the squabbling and being overtired from school/preschool. I was gazing into the future and thinking in a few years it would be easier......bollocks!

NAO, that is the exact same as our cereal cupboard. I wouldn't give my boys branflakes though, they have inherited their Father's eager bowels

Am not going to add anything to the bigger debate here, but just wanted to say

at Lizzylou's dh's 'eager bowels'.

I would like to pinch that phrase, if that's ok with you lizzy, as it describes perfectly my own dh's posterior action.

I'm with Trillion's post on this ...what people actually do and what people say they do on the internet are very often 2 different things

lizzylou 'eager bowels' YES!! weetabix barely hits the stomach before its all over in the pan

I am often in awe of their bowels, my SIL informs me that it is a family trait.

oo epicly unperfect preparent here

im smoking

plus i was only with the father around a month before i got pregnant

and im 16

and hes 6 years older than me

and i intend to get every bloody benifit possible aswell as a council house

lalalalala
i'll be annoyingly perfect when the baby gets here to make up
maybe....

Plump, you can have "eager bowels" if I can use "posterior action".

Its awful

with so many off them the dinner table can sometimes be like the Marie Celeste as they nip off to evacuate

Not dd oddly!

How is that unperfect, Cherry?

May not be the white picket fence some people dream of starting parenthood off with, but it's what you make of it from here on in.
Am ignoring the smoking bit deliberately

How long have you to go?

I'm not a perfect mother. I'm not a perfect MNer either - I sometime tag onto threads without reading them ... just to add, if no one has already mentioned it that one of the best books to read prior to motherhood is Libby Purves 'How Not to be a Perfect Mother'. Such a relief from the other baby bibles.

I will happily trade you posterior action for eager bowels Lizzy!!

Parenting is such a personal thing, and the choices that we make are so much shaped by our own experiences, aren't they? My mum has heard me shouting at my children and has reprimanded me for it, proudly pointing out that she never shouted at my brother and me. Which is true, but then she silently sulked for ages and to me that was very difficult to deal with. My dad otoh erupted ever so often, but then it was done, which I personally found easier to cope with. My mum never made much of an effort to get to know me or to do things with me that I wanted to do, and she blatantly preferred my older brother over me. So she could have come on here and said "your shoutiness is horrid, poor child to have to put up with this", but then again she had her faults. I just think that we don't know the full story on any of the posters here so we should be very very careful with sweeping statements. I personally would never put my child into nursery full-time, but I would never in a million years criticize another poster for doing it or tell them that their child would suffer because of it. I think it can be so easy on here to be quite hurtful and blunt, in real life you would think very very carefully before saying some of the things that people come out with on MN. And, sorry to come across as an oldtimer there, in the golden olden MN days it didn't happen like that, and that makes me a bit .

Having said all that, there are certain parenting standards below which nobody should fall, I think the vast majority of us agree on that.

As a mother of an only child, I hugely admire anyone who has more than 1 child under school age. God only knows how any of you cope!

Emkana, I am very much a shouter rather than a sulker. So was my Mom, we are all fiery types who blow up quickly but then it is swiftly forgotten.

I do think that we are all Mothers (perhaps some Fathers) trying to do our best and I have to say that Motherhood has been the single biggest challenge of my life, truly. Some days I find myself at a total loss and wonder what on earth is going on in my own house.

I can remember a thread very like this one from a few years ago though Emkana, where the Op got a pasting for some "Slummymummy" behaviour.

Everyone has their own standards and ideals, some have said that they would never shout at their DC, I do on occasions, but that doesn't make me a bad Mother, or them perfect.

Gerroff, I was often found rocking on the kitchen floor holding my knees tbh, am glad that those days have passed!
I see women who have more than 2 DC and completey in awe, truly, I don't know how they can organise them all. I have always found it a struggle to organise myself, let alone 2 DS's and a DH

mine have never touched a drop of anything organic.

DD calls her lady parts 'siao jie jie' because i didn't know what other word to use...

i once got inside the supermarket before remembering DD was still in the car.

whilst going through a bad eating patch DD had nothing but fish fingers or tuna potatoe for dinner for ages.

this morning i was considering putting the toddler up on ebay, but then i realised we'd be certain to get bad feedback....

Yet again, something that I've posted on in a lighthearted way has turned around and I'm made to feel like shit. Not that I'm saying anyone has mentioned my post in particluar, I'm not that noticeable.

I don't swear at my children.
I swear if I do something stupid or at other drivers.

They are 1 and 3 and I love them to distraction but after 6 months of 4 o'clock wakings I am exhausted. I'm snappier and more short tempered more often than I'd like and I hate myself for it.

I'm not a bad parent, I'm a bloody good one.

I'm just knackered and fed up.