Sometimes parents just have to forgive themselves for less than stellar Mom moments. Guest blogger, dad and radio show host, Jeremy Padgett encourages cutting ourselves some well-deserved slack.
We recently had a topic on the morning show that we called “mom of the year,” referring in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way to the one time that you totally failed at being a parent! Whether it was just pure laziness on your part, maybe a slip of the tongue letting a curse word fly in front of your 3-year-old, or taking your kids to the grocery store with messed up hair in their PJs because it was just too much work to get them dressed. It was a great topic and pretty darn funny when the calls started rolling in! This parenting gig is pretty exhausting and sometimes no matter how hard we try to be the perfect parent, things are inevitably going to go wrong.
One of the best calls we received was from a woman who was busting herself because she let her daughter have numerous bowls of super sugary cereal for dinner, all while she sat on the couch and had a bottle of wine! She just wasn’t in the mood to force her daughter to eat her vegetables that night. Don’t feel bad moms, not every dinner can have the complete food pyramid in it. Consider that little Pinot Grigio vacation on the couch a much needed mental health break.
My sweet little Grandma has a great story that she loves to tell as well. When my dad was a baby, he fell asleep in the middle of her bed. My grandma tiptoed out of the room to get a couple chores done thinking that he would be perfectly safe. About 10 minutes later she came back into the room and my dad had vanished! Where did the baby go? Panicked, she heard a little whimpering, and went closer to the bed to investigate. Turns out my dad decided to roll on the bed and slid right down into the little crack between the mattress and the wall and was stuck like a little cork. Total “mom of the year” moment that my grandma laughs about now although it was really frightening at the time.
And I would totally kick myself if I didn’t have a chance to bust my wife on something as well. Our own little 10-month-old, Lyla, is in a rolling mood of her own. Not yet able to crawl, she rolls all around the floor to get where she needs to go. She was laying in the middle of our living room floor nice and safe when my wife decided to zip into the kitchen to make her a bottle. During the couple minutes alone, Lyla decided to roll over to our dog who was chewing on a rawhide bone. She scooped it away from him and then proceeded to place the slimy, gooey, chewed up end into her own mouth and began suckling away. My wife came back in horrified not knowing what to do. She tried her best to rinse out Lyla’s mouth finally chalking the incident up to a “mom of the year” moment.
The nasty dog bone mishap happened a couple weekends ago and so far Lyla seems to be doing just fine. Although, for some reason every time the doorbell rings she starts barking and she won’t stop dragging her butt across the floor! Weird.
Jeremy Padgett is a morning radio personality and executive producer for The Mix Morning Show with Dom, Emily, and Jeremy on Denver’s Mix100.3. He’s also never had a cavity. Get in touch with Jeremy on Facebook and on Twitter at @JeremyOnDaRadio or by commenting below.
