Guilt As A Working Mom – My Kid Fell Behind Academically And Then I changed One Thing About It

As a kid, my academic performance was always above average, if not exceptionally well.

Now, as a Edupreneur myself, when I see my own young son struggling with his studies or falling behind academically, a guilt creeps in and often drag me down. I often feel I am not doing enough for my kid.

However, I want to make a clear point that neither I am too obsessed with marks nor my son is bad in studies. But at the same time, I want my son not to underestimate his abilities or hold himself back from accomplishing certain goals in life.

I used to think “success” in my workplace meant a chic working area, stress free working hours, well manageable staff and clients, no nagging thoughts after working hours, good finances and a year – over – year growth. I had similar naïve notions of what it meant to be a successful parent: good work-life balance, pre-planned handy parenting tips, a full packaged healthy meal on table, show–off worthy report cards and always well-adjusted, hardworking and happy kid.

But now, I have been juggling both roles. When parenting, I felt I should be working; when working, I felt I should be parenting. What a dilemma, huh!

There is a nagging feeling that I am never doing enough or spending time for my kid, who will lag behind compared with children who are born to more devoted parents.

Now, I have come to accept this bumpy ride – the realities of my real life, in which I care deeply about my work and also care deeply about parenting my young son and I think therein lies the fret of every working parents.

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One major thing I have changed – my approach.

I have changed my approach towards my work, my approach towards my kid and my approach towards my other priorities.

I cannot sacrifice and no one should sacrifice utterly for one thing in life whether it is work or children. It is reasonable to have other priorities in life that we balance with parenting.

I replaced ‘parental guilt’ with ‘parental responsibility’.

It is the high time that I owe the parental responsibilities. At different times, under various circumstances, I’ve been slow to act for the needful by thinking things will fall into place by default or without an effort.

Most importantly, I also found out that I can be a pretty imperfect parent and still have my child turn out fine.

May be I can sit with my kid and go through his classroom learnings on regular basis.

May be I can teach him to obtain resources that promote practical education thereby increasing his engagement in learning.

May be I can show him the scope for improvement while he was unaware of it.

May be I can be more relaxed whenever I am around him and sort out things.

May be I should loosen the grip every now and then and believe his decisions.

I am hoping for the best and also ensuring myself to be approachable and available so that he comes to me whenever he feels like.

I also hope that my ‘parental responsibility’ paradigm does not constitute burden for him rather it leads to empowerment.

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