Hi,
I'm a single parent to a happy, beautiful, funny, kind and caring 7 year old.
I am a lone parent as I left my daughter's father 2 years ago due to his abusive behaviour. He has been in and out of her life ever since, and has now completely disowned her after I asked him to not book over time at work on the weekends (4 days) that he was supposed to spend with her.
My main childcare support is my mum, dad and elderly nan (though nan is a very last resort due to her age)
I have recently started a new job which is full time (My previous job was term time only and I left due to poor treatment and bad management). The only reason I took this job was after speaking to my mum about the childcare aspect during the holidays. She said it would be absolutely fine and we would work it out, so I felt comfortable leaving my term time only job to persuade something more exciting... turned out to be a big mistake.
It might help to note that I am unfortunately a massive people pleaser (likely a product of my previous relationship) and am consistently running around doing things for friends and family before and after I'm working my full time job and parenting so I am usually consistently completely drained.
The Easter holidays just passed and last week, in my new job, my mother called me in tears saying I need to come straight to her house as my daughter was asking for her mum and she didn't know what to do. She has her on quite a regular basis and some weekends so I can have some time to myself but she has never done this before. So i left my new job in the middle of the morning. When I turned up my daughter was absolutely fine.
That morning, my daughter was offered to have a sleep over at her friend's. I asked her if she wanted to go and she said yes. This completely set my mum off.
She started screaming at me saying I don't spend enough time with my daughter. She even went as far as to call my nan and tell her that she must say no if I ask for help with childcare.
I explained that I had lots of plans over the weekend with her, that I am parenting all on my own and I do sometimes need a break. As mentioned, my previous partner was abusive and very controlling so I was not allowed to go out or spend time with friends. I now have a new partner who I know from my teenage years who i absolutely adore and have become very good friends with the people we used to go to college with which is absolutely amazing for me. I like to take time to spend with my friends which is how I blow of steam/relax, or sometimes I will just spend the day doing absolutely nothing with my partner which is absolute bliss to have a bit of quiet time away from the constant rush of my life.
I do my absolute best to be the best mum I can for my daughter but it feels like it is never good enough and if I need a break to unwind and reset myself, I'm being called a bad parent.
This is not the first time my mum has done this either. She has a lot of narcissistic tendencies and I know I probably should have seen this coming.Last time, we had a big conversation with my dad (they are divorced)And she apologised for her behaviour - I thought it was all put to rest.
So I suppose my question is, am I a bad mum for needing a bit of time away from my child to relax and be with my friends?