As parents, we’re always trying our best, but sometimes our best may not be good enough. Or after the fact, we realize there might have been a better way. Perhaps we were too hard on our kids, or maybe we could have been more attuned to what they needed in the moment. Parenting is full of remorse that way. You eventually realize that as your kids get older, you may have even more parenting regrets. I’m mom to a tween, and looking back, there are definitely things I did with and for him that I wish I had done differently.
One mom on Reddit is having a bit of an existential crisis as her young kids get older, so she asked other moms how they try to stop focusing on what’s wrong and enjoy the wonder of having little kids. What she likely learned is that she’s not alone in her fears.
She realized that she may be focusing on the wrong things.
Reaching out to the parents in the r/Parenting community, the mom explained that she has two kids, ages 5 and 7.
“I catch myself constantly nagging about behavior, table manners, cleaning up toys. The other day my youngest asked if Santa could call him and I almost said no because he hadn’t finished his chores,” she wrote.
The meaning of ‘The days are long’ is finally making sense.
“These magic years are so SHORT,” she continued. “They only truly believe in Santa for maybe 4-5 years tops. Am I really going to waste that precious window being the fun police?”
The mom went on to say that she’s noticing “the wonder is starting to fade” with her older child. “And what do I have to show for it? A slightly cleaner playroom? Some half-finished chore charts?” she asked in her post.
So she found something that would make her kids really happy, which was a personalized Santa call. “THAT’S what I’ll remember,” she said. “Not whether they put their shoes away perfectly.”
She then asked other moms, “Do you wish you’d focused more on creating those special moments instead of perfect behavior? Because I’m feeling like I need to shift my priorities before these years slip away completely.”
A fellow mom had a very realistic response.
“Sometimes I can literally be like a big kid in an adult’s body, be right there in the magic with them and be soo playful. Yet, at other times I can be downright neurotic in my parenting to the point where I annoy myself hearing myself speak,” the other mom wrote.
“It can be so easy to get caught in the day to day grind and all the to do items that you forget that time is just running out like sand in an hourglass, and that precious childhood is just dwindling away with every tick of the clock,” she added.
“I’m by no means a perfect mom – I’m flawed like all the rest,” the wise mom continued. “And I know I’ve messed up and my kids will remember some not so good moments… But I’m hoping they will also remember all the magic ones, and that mom always tried to make things fun. Have fun and silly rituals and annual traditions.”
Another mom shared that having parenting regrets wasn’t for her.
“I don’t have any regrets,” she wrote. “I have many missed moments but there is a good reason for this: I didn’t have the possibility.”
There are some things one mom wishes she had done differently.
Another mom has children who are preparing to leave the nest, and her parenting regret has to do with something practical: taking care of themselves.
“I actually wish I had been firmer about teaching chores & responsibility a little bit younger. It’s much easier to just do things yourself than to try to teach over and over again, but the areas where I *did* do that, I see rewards now: my kids can do their own laundry, some very basic cooking, and SOME cleaning,” she wrote. “But there are a lot of areas where I didn’t do that (for example: washing dishes, cleaning the toilet), and now I’m having to backtrack and try to teach them these skills before they leave the house for good.”
