The ‘ideal’ parent

I’ll be the first to admit social media has been my best friend and worst enemy, especially since becoming a parent. A perk of social media is getting a quick confidence boost from a post, with a lot of likes or comments. We are all guilty of this.

However, it also has the ability to make you compare your life with others and on a bad day, find yourself jealous.

I’ve been jealous or judged my parenting against posts of babies sleeping through, homemade crafts, the perfectly clean outfit or milestones others have hit. All of this is ridiculous, why? Because I’m also a mum who posts pictures of perfect days and moments.

It’s not that these posts are a lie, parenting is the fact you can’t describe how much you love this tiny person. You do want to show you off the beautiful smile they gave you. You do feel proud when they hit a milestone or learn a new skill. You do take pride in when they look clean and happy. However, these tiny people are also capable of giving you exceptional headaches and mentally exhausting you. So I share the above moments because I need a boost, I need a reminder I’m smashing it and I need to feel like a super mum too.

I do this because 99% of parenting moments would not make a flattering picture. It’s putting an outfit on your baby and having them stain it with orange food or sick within an hour. It’s wet wiping your own clothes because you can’t face changing again. It’s letting them just run around the house in a vest, it’s bedtime in an hour and I’m not wasting clothes. It’s staring at your child at 4.30 and both crying because your tired. It’s starting messy play at home and realising it was a mistake, so now you pay for a group and on occasion use cereal. It’s the fact tidy is the new clean. Its abandoning your homemade meals because they are screaming. It’s having down time so infrequently you post the whole event. Its taking selfies, because no one remembers to take photos of you and your baby. It’s reaching the bottom of a wash basket and finding an item you lost six months ago.

Six months ago, I would have rated my current house efforts, gym efforts, couples time and self-care as mediocre, at best. But taking into consideration that I am now a parent, these efforts aren’t mediocre at all, they are downright phenomenal. Social media is full of ideal personas, but it is also full of people that succeed and fail on a daily basis. So when you see these photos, just remember their challenges are as hard as yours, their lives have changed too and honestly each and everyone is just looking for a confidence boost.

(With all that said, if they regularly make you feel jealous or mediocre – unfollow them. Plenty more parents on the internet).

Next month I will be posting my most embarrassing mum fail, because if you can’t laugh about it, you’ll cry.