How Do You Keep Perspective

I sometimes wanto walk out on this parenting thing. I've had enough! It's so terribly hard with no reward or no one saying yeah that was the right thing to do. How do you know?
How do you not get sucked into the vortex of doubt knowing these mistakes could cause damage in their lives?
I have many of my own issues to deal with & I get lost in my own world & know I'm not dealing well in parenting.
I just wanto run. If they wanto know who their mom was maybe they can track me down when their an adult!

Yet I also hear in my head what an absolute coward I'd be to leave them.
I just feel I wasn't cut out for this. How do I smile in all this chaos?

I think that everyone agrees: parenting IS hard. Unfortunately, we're going to make mistakes every now and then. We are human. Reminding ourselves of that fact can help us put things into perspective.

Personally, I also struggle with parenting. My older daughter is a real challenge for me, and I often question whether or not I'm making the right choices as well. I don't want to mess my girls up! I just try to use things that I learned in college, about psychological development, rather than my own personal experiences to help guide me through. I don't know if that is the right decision to make... but it's what I've chosen to do. Hopefully, I am choosing the right way to go!

Adding my own psych issues into the mix doesn't help things, I know. So, I probably have to put a lot more effort into parenting than many other people. {I don't know if that's true, but it sure feels that way to me.} Anyway, admitting or acknowledging my challenges and then moving forward to focus on what I am doing to counter helps me put things into a healthier perspective. Does that make sense to you? Because if I don't push myself to recognize what I am doing to overcome my issues & be the best mom that I can be, well, I just feel like a worthless caregiver. My younger daughter tells and shows me every week that I'm a good mommy. I am loved & I hold onto artwork in every room. Their pictures, jewelry, and crafts remind me of those positive moments to keep me going through my dark times.

Gentle hugs & best wishes to you. I'll bet that you're a lot harder on yourself than your children are. Try to remind yourself that you are doing the best that you can & that your children love you.

It's not easy when there's an overabundance of do this/don't do this, do that/don't do that, this works for me so it must work for you, they know best so they must be right, etc. Etc. Ad naseum...

Never mind all the rhetoric about maternal depression, care of a study of roughly 900 low income mothers with children enrolled in head start as the basis to discuss how a mother's depression even if low grade can stunt cognitive ability...

You get the idea...

Take all the small moments that you can and remind yourself that effort matters.

Have you mapped out your parenting style yet? There's 3.

Your post shows your a good parent. You care about how you are doing as a parent. In my experience the bad parents didn't care about how they were doing.

Kids are hard, Parenting is really hard. We (as parents) become hyper aware of all the things that our parents did wrong so while avoiding them make new mistakes.