What a day! Everything that could go wrong did. By dinner time, Marla felt ready to explode at the smallest provocation - which her six-year-old son unwittingly provided when he spilled his milk. Before she knew it, a hurtful string of words had slipped out of her mouth. "What's the matter with you Jason, you're always so careless! Now look at the mess you made!" Marla could hardly believe she'd said that to her son. A wave of guilt swept over her as tears began rolling down his cheeks.
Sound familiar? Every parent has knee-jerk reactions to milk spills and the thousand daily irritations that come with having kids. And every parent says or does things in anger or frustration that he or she quickly regrets. It's natural to feel guilty when we belittle our kids or yell at them unfairly. But this is one of the few varieties of guilt that can be productive, if we use it to react differently the next time. (And there's always a next time, often sooner than you'd like.)
Let's rewind the tape and see how Marla could learn from her mistake. For example, she could, say to herself, "I really need a cool-down period after miserable days like this one. So I'm going to take at least five minutes for a time out for myself without interruptions from anybody." That would be a positive way for Marla to avoid hurtful outbursts that come from fatigue or stress.
Whereas productive guilt can help us change for the better, non-productive guilt stems from situations that are beyond our control. For example, if you must work, so you have to put your child in day care. You have an only child,and you can't have any more, yet you feel guilty because you're afraid your child will be lonely. Or you get stuck in a horrendous traffic jam and can't get your son or daughter to a play date. Unfortunately, most of us experience useless guilt more often, which makes us feel discouraged and saps our energy.
So how do we transform non-productive guilt into a learning experience? The first step is to understand what causes it.
It's All Around You
Most guilt arises from the reactions and opinions - real or perceived - of other people. Consider the case of one of my workshop parents, Barbara, who participated in an informal weekly playgroup with several other mothers and kids in her neighborhood. Barbara's two-year-old daughter, Jackie, had the most difficulty sharing and was more prone to tantrums than her peers. During one session, when Jackie tussled with another child over a toy car and then launched into an ear-splitting tantrum, Barbara noticed two other mothers look at each other as if to say, "There she goes again."
Barbara told us that she was thinking about quitting the playgroup. She sensed the negative judgments of the other mothers and felt especially guilty because her overly-demanding child made her feel like a failure. When she brought this up in of my workshop, the moms reassured her that their kids often embarrassed them in public, and that such scenes were an inevitable part of raising a spirited toddler.
Barbara and the others then began to talk about how guilt seems to be a universal part of parenting. Where does all this guilt come from, they asked. "From others, and sometimes ourselves," I told them. Let's take a look at the most common ways in which we let other people - friends, relatives, strangers, and even our kids -- pin the guilty label on us.
Six Sources of Guilt...and Six Guilt Busters
1. Parenting as a Competitive Sport. It's hard for some of us to accept ourselves as "good enough parents," especially when we tend to compare ourselves. We've all heard phrases like: "She's always so calm and NEVER loses her cool." ... "She ALWAYS seems to know exactly what to do." ... "Her son NEVER has temper tantrums." ... "His daughter is ALWAYS so well-behaved at family gatherings." These kinds of competitive statements make us feel guilty for believing we're the only ones who can't manage our children.
But only in the movies or on TV shows do people NEVER lose their cool, or do children behave like cute and appealing puppets. In the real world, no parent remains calm and collected ALL the time. And no child ALWAYS behaves as a perfect little being. Yet it's common for parents to feel as if they're failures when their kids act out or when they "lose it" themselves.
Guilt Buster: When people tell me that they find it easy to manage their kids or rarely get angry at their "little angels," I simply don't believe them. When parents in my workshops speak of friends who make such claims, I simply tell them, "They lie!" Remember, the only real standards for measuring parental self-worth are the ones that you create for yourself. So give yourself permission to make mistakes, and accept the fact that you're always learning on the job.
2. Replaying Old Scripts. Even before our children are born, many of us are convinced that we're going to be exceptional parents and not make the mistakes made by our own mothers and fathers. But then reality hits and we discover that we're either just like them or we've gone to the other extreme.
A perfect example is my friend Elise, who once lamented, "My mother was highly critical, so when I had my own children, I vowed that I certainly wasn't going to follow in Mom's footsteps. But guess what? That's exactly what I do. I constantly criticize my kids and then feel terrible about it. Whenever they're giving me a hard time, my mother's words just tumble out of my mouth before I can stop them."
Guilt Buster: Join the club, Elise; learned behaviors are extremely difficult to unlearn. After all, our first teachers (our parents) were our most powerful role models, so it's only natural to continue their lessons throughout our adult lives, too. It takes real effort and self-determination to create new scripts - your own - for handling the many situations you encounter every day. So go easy on yourself; give yourself credit each time you don't blurt out negative remarks that your parents might have said to you.
3. Neglecting Your Own Needs. Let's face it: being a parent requires a lot of time and sacrifice. That means you may feel conflicted when you take care of yourself. For instance, Jane really benefits from her daily workout. But sometimes she has difficulty allowing herself to go to the gym. Even though she has a great babysitter, her kids begin protesting as soon as they see her putting on her running shoes. Too often, she caves in and skips her workout because she feels guilty.
Guilt Buster: Surprising as it may sound, the parent who's always making sacrifices at the expense of her own needs isn't doing her children any favors. When Jane works out, she comes back feeling energized and more patient. The key for her is to remember that her kids aren't about to say, "Go ahead Mommy, we know this is good for you." Jane can't expect her children to give her permission to exercise, so she needs to give it to herself without guilt or ambivalence.
4. Getting Caught up in the "I Should Have Known..." Syndrome. Sometimes parents blame themselves unnecessarily for their lack of knowledge. For example, one father I know, Dave, related an incident that took place seven years ago. He recalls how his then five-year-old son woke up one Sunday morning coughing and feeling sick. Dave administered over-the-counter cough syrup and went about his weekend chores, while his son sat curled up in a chair. Over the course of the day, Dave got more and more frustrated with his son's complaining and told him that it's "just a little cough," and if he got up and did something fun, he'd feel better. Finally, towards dinner time, he realized that his son was in serious respiratory distress and rushed him to the hospital. The diagnosis was asthma. "He could have died," the distraught man relayed. "I thought I was pretty knowledgeable -- how could I have missed the signs of an asthma attack?"
Guilt Buster: While being consumed with guilt, Dave forgot an essential fact: he's an advertising executive, not a doctor. Sure, we're far better informed than any generation of parents before us. But that doesn't mean we should blame ourselves for not knowing everything. The key is to use your mistakes as learning opportunities.
5. Catching Other People's Barbs. This is the most damaging of all guilt sources, and it often comes from people who care about you, such as family members and friends. A friend might express subtle disapproval of your child's eating preferences -- "My son just loves vegetables." Or when you pick up your crying baby, your mother might say, "Aren't you being a little overprotective?"
Strangers, too, may feel compelled to give you advice or critique your parenting style. These days it's not uncommon to hear phrases like, "How can you let him go out without a hat?"... "Isn't he a bit old to be sucking his thumb?" ... Or even, "Maybe what she needs is a good swat!"
Consider the case of Lynn, a mother of an active preschooler. Lynn had gone to the store to buy some cleanser so she could clean up the walls that her son had decorated with crayons and markers. She described the following conversation.
"So, how old is your kid?" the young clerk asked as he packaged Lynn's groceries and listened to her wall-cleaning woes.
"Three-and-a-half," Lynn replied.
"Really?" the clerk blurted out in amazement. "Writing on the walls at three? Sounds like you let him get away with murder."
Lynn had walked into the store feeling somewhat amused - at least the drawings on the wall were colorful and creative - and left feeling wounded by the clerk's gratuitous and insensitive remark.
Guilt Buster: At the time of the incident, Lynn thought she had two choices: either absorb the barb and feel bad, or lash back to defend herself or challenge the clerk's remark. Better yet to accept the fact that this outsider was just making an uninformed assumption, without knowing anything about Lynn or her child. She could then have ignored the comment or realized the clerk knew nothing about how many kids behave."
6. Accepting the "Bad Mommy" Label. It's so easy to allow our children to judge our worthiness as parents when they make statements like: "You're mean." ... "You don't love me." ... "It's not fair." "Daddy's nicer." These are the remarks that try parent's souls - though spoken from the mouths of babes, we nonetheless feel hurt, and often guilty, when we hear them. That guilt often leads to three extra rounds of a board game or giving in to requests for more cookies than we had originally agreed to. The "bad mommy" label is a tough one to accept.
Guilt Buster. Children can't possibly judge our parenting worth objectively, and we can't empower them to do so. Phrases like, "you're mean, why can't I have just one more ice cream cone?" can be gently but firmly answered with "I know you'd like to have another ice cream cone. But my limit is one." Above all, try not to get defensive - this isn't about you or your loveability. It's about setting limits and showing your child that you said "no" because you're actually quite a good mommy!
One Step Back, Two Steps Forward
Whenever you experience guilt, stop and ask yourself whether it's of the useless or useful variety. Then, if it is productive guilt, give yourself a break by resolving to learn from the experience and respond differently the next time. Most important, work at wiping useless guilt out of your life. You won't be guilt-free. But you will be guilt-savvy and ready for the next situation that puts your parenting mettle to the test.
