Dear Parent, Your job is not to be perfect.

Dear Parent, Your job is not to be perfect. Your job is to keep trying to do your best and to find mercy for yourself when you mess up. You are human. And there’s no better way to teach your kids about resilience and self-compassion.

The Perfect Parent Myth

Okay, I have to admit that I’m writing this post mostly for me. But I’m guessing that I’m not alone on this one.

As a recovering perfectionist, I find that often the hardest person for me to forgive is myself. Anyone else ever experience this?

I set the bar high for myself, which is generally a good thing. But when I mess up, that failure seems to linger in my brain. I replay it over and over in my head and have a hard time letting it go.

So I’m trying to cultivate more self-compassion. I’m trying to change the voice in my head to the voice of a friend instead of a critic. The perfect parent is a colossal myth.

Old habits are hard to break so this hasn’t been easy. But there’s no better way to teach my kids about self-compassion than by practicing it myself.

There is no effort without error and shortcoming

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Theadore Roosevelt

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