Joanne the Coach

Happy Guilt-Free Mothers Day

Look what I found between the sofa cushions - an extra day.  Where did that come from?

Did you see Sandra Parsons' column in The Times yesterday?  She's certainly spot on to note that the more Middle England the child, the more they view a trip to McDonald's as an immeasurable treat.

However, one sentence made me pull the face.

One of the things you learn in personal development, is that if a client talks about 'you' doing or feeling something, what they really mean is 'I'.  So if someone says "You know when you do X and you feel a bit Y", they are really talking about their own feelings.  But it helps to mentally distance these things, because then you can blame it on somebody else and avoid taking responsibility for your own feelings.

So when Sandra Parsons writes about working mothers:  "You feel feel permanent guilt at not being a good enough mother", although it reads like an attempt to tar the lot of us with the same brush, it's really the writer's own feelings about her own life coming through. 

Regular readers will know that this blog is a parental guilt-free zone.  My children were not born with a free package of guilt, and I resist any attempts to palm one off on me. I don't feel guilty about any aspect of working and parenting.  I'm doing the best I can.  When I go wrong I aim to do better.  Why feel guilty about that?

The part I do think Parsons gets right is about our lives being out of control.  But then that's true for anybody, whether you're a parent or not.  Absolutely nobody is in 100% control of their life.  This is why perfectionism rarely works - life, with its regular curveballs, will always change your plans.

It doesn't do working mothers any favours at all to promote the myth that we must all feel guilty that we're somehow not good enough.  And sometimes it feels positively radical to say that you (of course I mean I) will have no part in keeping the guilty myth going.  Even with an extra day, life's too short for that.

Parenting for Beginners - Peas To Meet You, Fussy Eaters

I have invented something fabulous.

It is called a peabab.

Basically, you get a cocktail stick, skewer as many peas as you can on to it, so you end up with something that resembles a mini kebab made of peas.  And that's the peabab.  I told you it was fabulous.

If you are a small child (not too small though - cocktail sticks a bit pointy for some), you then consume said peabab, and get started on making another one.  You may briefly wonder why your mother is doing her Happy Dance, but you carry on and soon have consumed more peas in one sitting than you did in the last year.

It's ridiculous some of the things we do to get children to eat more healthily.  Having extensively researched the subject over the last 7 years, I can tell you that some of the most effective ways to get your little blighter darling to eat more veg are:

• Invite round a pal for tea.  If you happen to be the proud parent of The Boy Who Likes Carrots, rest assured that your child will never be short of a dinner date.
• Focus on the things that they do eat, and make them the most nutritious versions you can find.  Anybody want a loaf baking, I do the healthiest bread in Brighton?
• Bribe them with stickers.  Why are stickers such kiddie-crack?  It's a mystery, but it works.
• Astonish them with a peabab.  You know it makes sense.