Does anyone else constantly run a sort of Good Parenting tally in their head?

[Tortoiseonthehalfshell]

Because I said this to my husband this evening and he looked at me like .

On the days when I'm at home with DD (2.5) I have this constant refrain in my head; well, we've made homemade playdoh and gone to the park and had an Educational Outing To The Post Office (o god what has my life become) but then I let her watch TV for half an hour over her allotted amount so I can play on the internet, really there's no excuse for that, how much fresh air has she had today, did the gardening include enough actual running around exercise or should we go for a walk as well and the muesli bar probably wasn't the best morning snack but I guess it had fibre in it.

I get to the end of the day with a mental report card; diet, exercise, improving activities (right proportion of crafts, life skills and imaginary play), proportion of my time spent paying attention to her and encouraging her appropriately vs telling her to hurry up/calm down/be careful/oh for goodness sake child.

Am I entirely insane or do all mums do this? I'm feeling entirely insane, reading this back.

Ha! We were walking to the supermarket and the postie trundled past and she asked what he did, and halfway through explaining I decided we were going to have an Educational Outing (which I put in capitals because I'm taking the piss out of myself) so we stopped in at the PO and she chose a cheapie card to send to her beloved Nana, "wrote" in it and then I did the address and stamp and let her post it in the big red box. Wednesdays she goes to Nana's for the afternoon, so she got to see the letter being delivered at the other end and everything.

She absolutely comes along when I'm doing jobs and i don't dress it up, but that really was just an excursion to let her play with posting letters.

Gosh that was a long explanation. Me, defensive? Anyway, I'm assuming that when #2 arrives I will be too knackered to do any of this crap for a while, and they'll all survive.

Tortoise - I can promise that you will be too knackered to do any of it, but that you will care more

right, prepare for a whinge - sorry in advance :o

I'm just struggling at the moment - DS is being hard work, my job is getting more intense - think full time work in part time hours, we've just moved into a shell of a house, so doing DIY in the evenings/weekends, and no kitchen, which makes getting any dinner a challenge, especially a nutricious one. And DS has decided to go on hunger strike this week too, so not sleeping at all because he wants 'bilk' all fricking night (and he's taken to biting during feeds again, when he isn't picking at my hands, or patting me, or generally fidgeting). (yesterday he ate 3 brioche, a piece of garlic bread at nursery, and a slice of apple. All day.)

I have to have a phone meeting for work every week - 1-1.5 hours long, with overseas collaborators, that can only be done at a time I don't work, and have a demanding toddler to deal with, so we normally spend that afternoon with pingu on silent in the background, and DS either feeding, or being shoved full of crap food in front of the TV. I ALWAYS feel like a failure on those nights.

The house is a tip, and DH isn't helping massively by leaving power tools within reach of DS, so I'm constantly on high alert making sure he hasn't got hold of something unsuitable (although I got a lockable tool box at the weekend which is helping!). The garden is child proof, but I have to do a cat shit patrol at least once a day as the local furry bastards cats think it's a toilet for them. And I never seem to get them all, so will find DS poking at some poo in a discreet flower bed. We don't have a washing machine either, so weekly launderette trips are a challenge, as DS will cause chaos there, so normally ends up being bribed with chocolate buttons.

I'm just so tired, and so tired of being a mother. I really am not very good at it just now. A week of sleeping on a bed (we're taking turns on the sofa or a mattress next to DS's cot until our bedroom is habitable) and actually sleeping may make a difference, but that won't happen for a least a month.

I feel like I'm always in a hurry so can't give him enough quality time, but when I do make time for him, he'll be a stroppy little nearly-2-year old, and tantrum, kick, scream, generally be a mardy little ball of fury, but he's all sweetness and light for DH/everyone else.

And now I need to go and pick him up from nursery, endure the motorway back home, then entertain him all afternoon until dinner (which he'll refuse), and fight him into bed, then clear up the house before DH gets in from a long and tiring day at work, whereupon we'll eat dinner and start flooring the bathroom.

Sorry, this is a self-indulgent moan, but I'm so so knackered, and feel like such a shite parent at the moment.

sorry for hijack

I too have a cat shit problem Kveta, you have my sympathies. Plant lots of mint, cats hate it. And put old tiles if you have any, on the soil in between the plants. It does work.

I cannot remember giving very much thought to what/how/why I should be doing with my children when they were young. We interracted - we talked but they had to entertain themselves for much of the time. They learned from day to day living without any plan of action from me. Our life was just our life
I probably could have spent more time thinking about it all - I probably could have done much better - and I probably made lots of mistakes but so what ? No one died. Both have grown up into successful confident adults and we have a close relationship. We talk about what they feel they missed out on and also what they remember fondly.
My children were very important to me but I never wasted any time worrying if I was doing everything I 'should'

Kveta, no you do not need to "entertain "you DC.

You can watch daytime TV with him on your lap for a cuddle.

You could read him a story and then bugger off to MN whilst he watches a DVD

You could cook yourself something lush, give DS a few spoons to bang about, then feed him a bit of grow up food, if he doesn't like it, give a brioche again. Kids do not starve themselves. repeat: they will not starve!

put him in a playpen with some fave toys, or a pan and a wooden spoon to bang on pan with. Or make a safe corner for him with a sofa/chair/table (really I think playpens are a must, not for 24/7, but for 30 mins of sanity! but I know they are out of fashion)

Kveta that sounds exhausting! You really must give yourself a break - it sounds like the situation is temporary (or at least some of the stress is). In the meantime you need to lower your standards. You're not a crap parent if you're just not doing as much as you'd like due to circumstances.

Make some things easier for yourself - do the cat-repelling things as ES suggests, and make DH take responsibility for the power tools. Why should you have to keep on top of that?? DS is his child as well, he's just as responsible for his safety as you are. It can't be that hard for him to remember to put them out of reach or in the box. We all have to do this every day with household items - irons, medicine, cleaning chemicals, sharp knives, scissors, matches. Get him to take some responsibility!

At the laundrette could you take some books or colouring or a magazine or something and use the time that the wash is going on as some guaranteed one-on-one time to spend with him? Even if it means choosing a longer wash programme. Or is there one near you where you can drop off and pick up later, so you don't have to spend that time loading it up. Or could he help you by passing you things from the wash basket, pressing the buttons etc? Or could DH do the launderette run or you do it without DS at some point?

Things must be quite confusing for your DS at the moment, you can help a lot with the frustration by explaining things before they happen. So telling him you will be going to the launderette and what you will do there, and remember he has no concept of time, but just events. This is hard to remember at first but quickly it becomes automatic. If he's almost two as well I'm guessing his language won't be fantastic yet, which can add to frustration as well. You can account for this to an extent with behaviour management, in the interests of keeping the peace as much as possible.

The phone meeting - this is ONCE a week. You are worrying too much! :) Although - could DH take him at these times? Could you put him in for an extra half day at nursery, to give yourself some downtime?

Agree wholeheartedly with Bertie re everything. What you are doing, Kveta, is really intensely hard work and you need to give yourself a break somewhere, whether that's actually finding a way to get a break, or just by accepting that until the building work is done the childcare is going to be less than perfect.

FWIW if you can keep a 2yo off power tools without a lion tamer's whip and a high security padlocked cage you are doing amazingly!

I take it you've just got the one kid? Find some friends with lots of kids or mroe relaxed types and chill out a bit :)

Kveta, you poor thing, you are trying to do three fulltime jobs at once and you don't even have a proper bed to sleep in! Bloody hell, woman, if ever there was a time not to judge yourself on your parenting.

Yeah, I am gonna go with entirely insane here.

I just make it up as I go along, some days we do just watch telly and pick our noses.

Aren't you in Oz?

Yup, why? Are we supposed to be less insane over here?

I think so.

Everyone at school/playgroup thinks I have been made into crazy stressed out mummy by my time in UK.

Is lovely to be back in normal land.

Though I appear to have brought the fucking weather with me.

When I do chill out and let her get on with it (and I do, honest) I think 'well that's good for her, teaching her independence/Benign Neglect, so I can balance that against the class we're going to go to tomorrow so I don't become a Helicopter Parent...'

Bonkers.

Maybe I should move back to England.

Lol, definitely Bonkers.

I just dont think about stuff that much.

I definitely do it - I am well and truly insane. I don't know if it's something to do with parenting (the constant criticism you hear from most members of society: "look at her, giving her child a chip", "look at that incompetent Dad", "can your child breathe under that pushchair rain cover?", "your child has no socks on, it will die of cold") or more generally in life and we just import it from the rest of our lives. At school you're given constant assessments - every day you get some homework back with red pen. In my working life, I've also received constant (mainly negative) feedback from colleagues, supervisors. And you also have a tally of what you have to do - to do lists. I think to be honest, I give myself to do lists in parenting (have I sung with them a reasonable amount this week? how many hours a day do they spend outside? have we been into the woods this week?) just to keep myself feeling sane (?!). I think I feel disoriented if I suddenly have a part of my life (a large chunk!) where I don't have a "plan" and a to do list and some kind of monitoring! I think I do it to help myself in a kind of life which is quite unstructured. I think the ideas of "just being" or "going with the flow" have been pretty much hammered out of me in my time before having kids...

Blimey,.. I wouldn't want to live in some your heads..... ;-)

Hmmm - I do feel like a better parent on the days that we've done something constructive. Like this morning we went for a swimming lesson and I reflected afterwards that although neither of us enjoy it much i do feel a sense of achievement for having been.

Most of the time I do extreme laid back parenting and live with a feeling of mild guilt (because I'm a lazy under achiever!)

thanks everyone - felt much better for having a moan, it's just been a bit shit recently since we moved house - too much to do and nowhere near enough time to do it!

DS is a handful - even my mum, who is my 2nd harshest critic (and who works with children day in, day out), has said she sees why we struggle, as he is incredibly full on. She spent an afternoon looking after him and said it was worse than having 4 0-7 year olds of her own :o I think if he ever bloody sleeps, it will make our lives easier too. (oh, and we spend time with a much more relaxed friend sometimes, and she is always saying 'thank god my DS is so easy, if I had yours I'd have gone mad by now!' as my DS is trying to skin her cat or stick a fork in a socket (sometimes both at once), and hers is happily 'reading' a board book :o). I'm not saying he is a difficult child, just a bit more challenging than we anticipated, and much more than seems normal for my side of the family! Apparently DH was like this until he was about 7 too, when he massively calmed down. [terrified for the next 5 years] [repeats phrase 'he's normal' and 'this too shall pass' ad infinitum]

those who said I don't need to entertain him - well, no, I don't, but I do need to distract him a lot from doing something utterly foolhardy, as he is still not old enough to realise that climbing up the front of the cooker or running full tilt at a window is not the most genious of ideas. He learns fast when something is Not a Good Idea, but it is always learning from experience! And TV doesn't distract him for much more than 20 minutes at a time. Playpen was used for a while, but always results in frantic screaming within about 30 seconds of child placement. It isn't worth the noise. Believe me, we have tried!! Also, if we give him something to play with, or leave something safe out for him to discover, he isn't interested - even if I fake disapproval :o It's only when it's something he really shouldn't be playing with that he is happy.

Also, his personality is at times so like mine I really don't like him. We clash a lot, and as the adult I always grit my teeth and diffuse the situation, but after a long day at work and then an afternoon toddler wrangling, I do sometimes lose it a bit. Last night saw him screaming in his cot whilst I cried downstairs for 30 minutes - he was ahving one of his frequent sleep refusal nights, and I wasn't coping . I calmed down enough to cuddle him and get him to sleep, but it wasn't nice. It's odd though, because we had a really nice afternoon just pottering about in the garden and doing some very messy painting.

however, today has been good so far, and my weekly meeting has been cancelled this week, so life could be a lot worse :o

sorry for the epics, but thanks for letting me moan, it's nice to get it all off my chest!

To be honest, I think I've always done a good living tally in my head all my life.

When I was a child I remember making sure I did my daily good deed (girl scout!) as well as doing stuff just for me.
When I was a student I would need to have done a certain amount of exercise and study to enjoy a night out with too much drink and not enough sleep. Otherwise I'd feel guilty.
As an adult pre-children, when I had plenty of time for leisure activities, I would balance thrillers with literary classics, same with movies.
So I guess it comes naturally to do this with the children, I don't worry about them sitting in front of the screen on a rainy Sunday if we have been getting a lot of fresh air and exercise on the Saturday. I make sure I find time to properly play with them and join in with games I dislike when they ask so that I can expect them to fit in with me without feeling guilty.

I did chuckle the other day when DS told his friend (who usually wants to play Lego or do screen stuff) that playing in the sun was important for healthy bones!

Yes. I do this!!!! I'll think 'Oh we went to the park, she's played in her sandpit and we've danced - now it's ok to put her in front of CBeebies!' I let the 'good' things cancel out the 'bad' things and I feel much better

I do this a fair bit too.
Kveta - is your little one teething, My dd is nearly two and also goes off food and bites a lot more when teething. Calprofen may be your friend here?

I do the tally thing too - not obsessively, just as a way of justifying any slacking off I might dare to do as a SAHM

Not sure if anyone else mentioned this but I remember reading in a book that suggested there were just three daily things that you should aim for with young children (under 5s): Outside time, creative time (imaginative play/art etc) and time spent reading/looking at books - anything else is a bonus. (not sure if I remembered it quite right but that was the gist)

I like this advice as it is simple and easy to achieve

I do it too, tortoise! I used to 'pass' about 60 percent of the time, but since getting pg with dc2 I 'fail' every day. I'm knackered and we lie in bed watching tv every morning after breakfast. If he's lucky we go out somewhere in the afternoon. Thank god he's at nursery 2 days pw when I work, and they have no tv there! Feel like a rubbish mum at the mo.