Am I turning into a “Slacker Mom” or just overwhelmed and tired?

When I was pregnant with my first child, I had such high expectations for how my husband and I would raise our little bundle of joy. That list of “when I’m a parent, I’ll never…” was rather long and fairly detailed. To my credit, my firstborn was actually around 2 before fast food passed his lips. I felt so guilty since he’d had a fairly organic diet up to that point, but I got over it. The second child was chomping on French fries and chicken nuggets as soon as he could chew them without choking.

It is sort of depressing to pull out that list now and see what is still on it. I’ve never really seen myself as someone who is “wishy-washy” in their beliefs. Most people who know me, even slightly, would say that I can be downright stubborn about the things I believe to be important. The fact that there are so many things that I’ve crossed off my list gives me some pause though, especially since it has to do with my children. It raises a fear that perhaps I have become a Slacker Mom, and that my kids will spend a portion of their adult life paying professionals to help them deal with the aftermath of my parenting skills, or lack thereof.

Or is it that I’ve realized that most of what was on my list was at best, silly, and at the worst, unrealistic? So it would stand to reason that the remaining items really are the important tenets of parenting, wouldn’t it?

In talking to other mothers, all of whom refused to be identified in this article, I know I am not alone in wondering. One friend, a busy executive and mother of two, summed it up like this, “we do our best parenting before we have the little monsters. It’s just a theoretical exercise at that point. Once they show up, theory flies out the window and it’s all about raw survival, keeping what’s left of your sanity, and minimizing the collateral damage to your kids.”

As I look at my kids, and our life, I have to admit that there is a lot of truth in that statement. On paper, before I had my kids, I thought I had all the answers. I thought I knew how I would handle things. I was going to do things the “right” way.

In reality, there are times when I honestly don’t know the answer, or how I’ll handle something until the moment is on me. At night, when I am meditating on the day that has passed, I know that I have not always done things the “right” way where my kids are concerned. I yelled rather than spoke. I reacted rather than accurately assessing the situation. I punished one for something the other started, because I didn’t see the first part of the scenario – just the part when one brother hauled off and decked the other one.

It all comes down to this, you do the best you can with the situation you find yourself in.

While I know that on the occasions when I am not home for dinner, my sons are more likely than not to be eating fast food in front of the television set, it is still different when they want me to endorse similar eating habits on the nights their father can’t be home for dinner. To me, an acceptable dinner for my kids has at least one vegetable, preferable a green one, a starch, a protein, and milk. While I was between jobs, it was easy to take this high road. Now that I am back in the work-force and my husband's transfer to a new position means he's usually working nights, it is a whole new scenario.

When I’ve had a rough day at work, sometimes I find myself justifying a pizza: tomato sauce – vegetable, sort of, check; green onions – green vegetable, check; mushrooms and black olives – veggies, sort of, check; cheese – protein, check. Top it off with a big glass of milk…yeah, it fits the parameters for an acceptable dinner, where the heck did I put the number for the pizza place?