Trying to balance working life and motherhood is hard, and the guilt can flow. Here are a couple of simple – yet powerful – things you can do to banish mummy guilt, which will also give you and your children the priceless gift of reconnection. I talk about mothers in my video, but I know that many men face similar feelings, so this applies to you too.

Join me in this video as I share my thoughts around motherhood and guilt, and how easy it can be to turn things around, with suggestions that anyone can fit into even the busiest of lives. Give yourself – and you children – a gift by taking a few minutes to watch, and then go and show them how much you love them.

Do you struggle with guilt? Perhaps you’re a father who struggles with guilt too. I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments, or feel free to send me a message if you’d prefer. If you found the ideas useful I would be honoured if you shared it with your network.

Transcript

– Hi, I’m Dr. Sally Graddon, The Life Balance Doctor.

This is a message for all those mothers out there who feel like they don’t do enough for their children, that perhaps they’re a bad parent.

We’ve all had days, weeks, months, perhaps even years, of feeling we’re not being the best parent we possibly could be, and it’s something that’s especially true of working mothers, women who spend their days split between work and their relationships and their family, and they’re particularly hard on themselves.

Perhaps they’re blaming themselves for shouting at their kids that morning when they were trying to leave the house, or for missing that play, or for not being able to stay at home with their child when they were sick.

Combining motherhood and working is particularly challenging and we heap the guilt on ourselves when things don’t quite go the way we want them to. But, for the vast majority of women, you are doing a really good job. If your heart is in the right place, if you love your children, then you are enough, and actually, it’s a really healthy thing for our children to see us making mistakes, because they learn that it’s not necessarily the mistake that’s the important thing, it’s how we deal with it afterwards. It helps them to learn that we’re all human. It gives them skills to draw upon themselves for future life.

There are a couple of things that I find really help when I’m feeling as though I’m not being as good a mummy as I would really like to be. First of all, I make a list of all the things that I do do for my children in a day. So, grab a piece of paper and write down everything you have done for your children today, everything from helping them get dressed, helping them clean their teeth, brushing their hair, making them lunch or breakfast. Write it all down, and I think you’d be surprised by how many things that are on there that you have done.

Second of all, write down a list of things that you can do with your child when you need to reconnect. They can be things that only take five or 10 minutes to do, but they can have a massive impact. Things like reading a story with them, cuddling up on the sofa and just snuggling. Talking to them about their day, or any other of the 101 things that you can probably come up with that not only fill your child’s cup, but also help you too, because it’s in those moments of reconnection that we get energy.

It’s so easy when we’re dashing around from A to B and then off to Z over there that we, we forget that it’s the moments of reconnection – the very thing which tends to go out of the window the quickest when we’re so busy – that has the ability to lift everybody.

Give it a go.

I hope it helps you, and if you’d like to talk to me about how I can help you reclaim those moments in your life that you’re currently missing by finding the balance that can seem incredibly difficult to come by, then get in touch and arrange a call.

I look forward to speaking with you.