We're all screwing them up!!

I ran into my neighbor the other day. She looked rather frazzled. Since she is the mother if a 6 month old baby this isn't completely unexpected. The following conversation ensued:

Me - hey how's it going?

Her - Oh good.

Me - (peeking into the stroller to see a bissfully sleeping baby). Oh look at her sleeping in there.

Her - well she's got to sleep sometime. Heaven knows she not sleeping at night.

Me - (chuckles good naturedly.)

Her - Seriously...I think I'm doing something wrong.

Me - Yeah probably.

Okay....I realize that on the surface this probably wan't a very helpful statement. But the fact is, that we're all doing something wrong.

Raising a kid isn't a math problem. It's not like putting together Ikea furniture. There is no multilingual instruction pamphlet and there is no "right" solution. We're all screwing our kids up. In my opinion, if whatever you do to mess them up can be corrected with intensive psychotherapy later on in life then you are okay. In fact, if we were all perfect parents we would only be making things worse. I mean who would they blame their issues in later life on if their mothers had been perfect? Themselves?? I hardly think so.

Any while we're at it....let's give each other a little bit of slack. I'm on my third trip around with this kid raising thing and I'm still flying by te seat of my pants. In fact, if I have learned anything, it's that my way isn't the right way. It may be working for me (or maybe not.....) but that doesn't mean that it's going to work for the mom up the street. We need to back off of each other and back off of ourselves and just enjoy the ride. This whole working mom vs stay at home mom, homeschooling mom vs public school mom, mom of one vs mom of many crap is ridiculous. WE'RE ALL SCREWING IT UP!!!

Pour yourself another glass of wine and start saving for therapy. (Unless you're one of those sober moms...you guys are totally f'd up!)

PS Don't forget free pastries tomorrow at Starbucks. It ends at 10:30. How many cups of coffee and free pastries do you think I can get between 9:30 and 10:30??