By breakfast there was already a good handful of guilt: sleeping-in means Daddy has to get up with the kids. I open my eyes and see housework jobs I hadn’t finished yesterday. I get downstairs and there are questions about things I’m getting ready for VBS—have I done it well enough, is there something I’ve missed? By lunch it’s an armful of guilt, by mid-afternoon I’m beginning to feel weighed down and by the kids’ bedtimes, yet again I’m only able to see the world through the familiar lens ‘I’m not good enough’.
It’s true there’s always something we can feel guilty about as a Mum. Whether it’s what we’ve forgotten, or the jobs that didn’t get ticked off the list, the skill we notice in another child that our own hasn’t yet mastered, or the unconscious ideal we have not lived up to, the responsibilities of a Mum lend themselves to guilt. A Mum’s responsibilities are open ended, difficult to measure, hard to quantify and that’s before adding additional needs into the equation.
The world around me can make me feel I ought to be and need to be super-Mum. There is an unspoken pressure to be on top of everything, to be organized, efficient, calm at all times—and yet assertive, child-led yet providing boundaries; laid back yet strict, always wise, unflustered, unafraid, and confident. And as a Mum to children with additional needs, I also need to be fiercely protective, well-read and understanding, gentle yet fighting for what my child needs.
Source: Special Needs Parenting- Key Ministry
