Fearlessly Battling Mommy Guilt

This morning E had a meltdown, because she wanted to help me make her lunch for day care. Ok. I had just gotten out of bed and was trying to pry open one of my eyes that had been gooped up with some day-old mascara. I blinked a few times, pushed a mess of curls out of my face, then calmly worked out a solution with her.

She wanted to stand on her chair at the counter, but the counter was a mess, so I talked her into sitting on the dining room table and brought the sandwich fixings to her. I stood by her side and went about my task, making a turkey sandwich for her lunch. Mark followed me to the table, as I had swiped all the sandwich ingredients, and he was about to make one for his lunch.

We worked away. E hadn’t had breakfast yet, so she sipped on her milk and stole a slice of Mark’s bread and chewed a large hole in the middle of it. I replaced the bread on his plate. I filled a bowl with peas. Before I could get the lid on it, she stole a few, and I refilled the bowl as I went about putting her lunch together, grabbing a yogurt out of the fridge, throwing a banana in her bag.

The mommy guilt took me off guard this morning. I suddenly asked myself, “Is this okay?” I’ve tried so hard to bring some order to my life, to not drag E through the chaos that is the life of a creative, distracted, off-the-wall, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants mama. Sometimes I feel like such a child myself when I look at my messy apartment, when I see E running around covered in marker ink, with lentil soup in her hair. And here she was, this morning, sitting in the middle of the table, not yet dressed or diaper changed, eating a “breakfast” of wheat bread, peas, and milk. This is my fault. I haven’t created any consistency in the mornings. She doesn’t know what to expect. I let her do almost anything she wants (within reason), to be like me, to help. And when she does typical toddler stuff (like eat the bread off Mark’s plate), I just fix the hiccup and move on.

I hear two versions of myself. One mommy-me says, “You’re not teaching her boundaries. There’s no schedule for mornings. She’ll think she can take food off of people’s plates. That she can climb tables, do whatever she wants. She won’t listen or respect others.”

But I sometimes think those are other people's words. My heart screams out to her, “Here is your world with minimal boundaries. Adapt to constant change. Survive. Take what you want (without hurting others). If you can climb a table, you can climb a mountain. Be whoever you want to be.” And when I do say, “no,” she does listen, and I explain why. Because we’ve always talked to each other. We can compromise, and in that, there’s respect.

I know that I have a toddler who says, “I’m sorry,” and “Be careful, Mama,” who shows compassion, empathy, self-awareness, who treats others with respect, who respects my voice (even when she doesn’t agree with it). I’ve had to say, “Please don’t take food off my plate right now, I’m eating that,” and she listens.

And I know that, I can organize pieces of my life, create small, consistent steps and schedules for her, but somewhere in between those dots, between dinner at 5pm and bedtime at 7pm, there will be chaos. Beautiful, fun, do-whatever-you-want (unless it involves getting injured) chaos.

And that just has to be okay. Because this is me. And this is me accepting myself (almost entirely – big step here). Finally. By seeing her turn out okay growing up in my world.