Look closely. Do you see the goat's teeth around our child's chubby little hand? Let me be clear: we are not feeding Oliver to to goats. We are merely having him pose by the goats for a cute picture, but then they started licking him. Ollie hates being licked. His Auntie Val has a gorgeous and gentle huskie-malamut mix who has a tendency to greet with her tongue, and he haaaaaaates it. After being greeted with said behavior, he cries and cries, then looks with horror around the room to make sure that the dog has gone far, far away. So did I know that Oliver would probably freak with the goats? I guess so. But when I felt really bad is when I saw furry Billy's lips recede to show his pearly whites. He didn't bite Oliver or anything, but I did kind of feel like a bad for letting it happen for the sake of a picture.
I have gotten in the unfortunate habit of prefacing a story with, "Oh my gosh, I am such a bad mom...." And I'll proceed to talk about how I allowed a goat to mouth my baby's arm . Or the time when I continued to eat cereal five feet away from Oliver and simply watch as he struggled to climb down from the bottom two steps, only to see him tumble down and hit his head on the wood floor. Or how about when I let him "cry it out" when he woke up three times in a night, only to discover hours later that he had thrown up, rolled in it and swollowed it so that he threw up mucous for the next hour. I felt like such a bad mom.
It's a phrase I hear a lot, with reassuringly similar stories from other guilt-ridden parents. But guess what? I'm banning it. Because really, I'm a good mom. And everyone else that I have heard use this phrase is, too. I would be a bad mom if I had known Oliver had thrown up that night and done nothing about it. Or if I didn't rush to his side to comfort him after his fall. Or told him to "tough it out" with the goats. You get the idea. There's enough self-doubt and guilt involved in parenting; we don't need to go around saying that we're bad at it.
Will I be introducing Oliver to the goats again? Probably. I said I was a good mom, not an amazing one.
I have a friend who never apologizes for herself. In college, she and her roommates had an iron-clad rule: if they heard one another say something self-deptrecating, the offender was sentenced to stand in front of a mirror and say 10 nice things about themselves.
ReplyDeleteBanning the b..m..from your vocabulary sounds equally healthy.
YLC
I have a goat story too! We were at a petting zoo and I liked the goats until one swallowed my entire pony-tail. I was sure the goat had eaten my hair, but my parents pulled it out, only to let the goat swallow it again so we could get a picture- I thought this was some kind of torture- it was gross enough the first time, but twice?! We washed my hair out in a drinking fountain after that, and I lived. :)
ReplyDelete~Angela Hanson
This is so very well said-- I hear lots of my mommy friends saying the same thing, and it SHOULD be banned!
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, I say, forget 'I'm a good mom'-- you are an AWESOME mom!
I'm sure Oliver would agree with me :)