I was chatting with another parent recently about guilt and how we handled it. Most parents carry guilt around like a clingy toddler. We try to ignore it, rationalize it and tuck it away in a nice warm, soft place, but it keeps hanging onto us.
Over the years I’ve tried to banish my guilt over making my kids move so much. It toddles off every few years, but then comes racing back to remind me that twice – yes, twice – I forgot to tell my kids how to get home on the bus on their first day as the new kid at school. (We all were obsessing about how to take the bus to school and get through the first day; none of us gave a thought to how they were going to make their way home.)
The After School Bus Incidents were just the tip of the iceberg of my guilt glacier. So imagine my surprise when Lois, the other mom I was talking with, said she felt guilty for not moving her kids.
What the what?
“My husband insisted that we stay put, because he was a military brat and hated moving all the time,” Lois said. She would have chosen a more adventurous life for her kids, she said.
Well, huh. Just when you think you have parenting and its guilt all figured out, here comes someone who wishes she was more like you, as you’re wishing you were more like her.
Proof that no matter what we do, we’re going to feel at least a little bit of guilt that we didn’t do it another way. The grass is always greener and all that jazz. It does no good to look back and wonder what if things had been different. Dwelling on regrets is the biggest parenting fail. However, I do wish I had more of the Internet resources that moving moms now have.
For more reading:
5 Tips for Feeling Guilty After Moving
Guilt Over Uprooting My Kids – Parents who have been through it weigh in on why and how not to let guilt overtake you.