Sometimes the more we think it matters, the more we feel we have to do everything PERFECTLY?

Perhaps not all of us feel the need for perfection – and that’s great!

But lots of us do and it impacts our parenting?

There is no such thing as perfection, despite what we see on social media, but striving for it can leave us feeling as though we have failed, that we just haven’t done enough, that we ARE not enough for our children, and that all comes with a sense of failure or shame.

How well do we parent from this place? Not very well at all.

When we feel that we are not good enough parents, we can find it hard to be fully present with our children, hard to admit what is actually going on for us and hard to make changes. Guilt drains our energy and doesn’t leave much for spontaneity, humour, creativity and being proactive. Instead we find ourselves feeling frustrated, tired, irritable and yep… yelling!

The great news is that you don’t have to be a perfect parent, you just have to be good enough!

Good enough parenting allows you to mess things up, not live up to your own expectations and still be doing a good enough job.

Research shows that getting it right some of the time and modelling how we put things right the rest of the time, is actually far more beneficial to our relationships with our children. When we model challenges and how to overcome them, they learn from this. They then have the tools to create and develop their own relationships from the ‘good enough’ stand point, without
having to feel guilty or ‘not enough’ themselves.

What a gift to give our kids!