Give yourself grace
This is something I have to constantly remind myself. I am, by far, my harshest critic. I beat myself up over every little mistake, and I guilt myself a LOT over how I handle parenting through deployments. It’s important to remember, though, that we are going to screw things up sometimes, and that’s okay. When our service members are gone, parenting is often like stumbling around in the dark. I know that we go into survival mode, and I sometimes wonder how we actually all survive. There are some things that I know I’m far from perfect in, but that’s all right. When my husband is gone, my kids get far too much time on electronics. This is especially true during the winter months when it’s just too cold for me to kick them outside to play. I don’t recommend everyone allow their children to melt their brains with electronics for hours a day, but sometimes, it’s what we have to do around here so we don’t go crazy. When my husband is gone, my kids tend to get a little more “lippy” than I’d like. This is simply because there’s only one set of adult ears in the house to hear them when they’re mouthing off or talking back.
During more than one reintegration, my husband has looked at me after my son has been sassing me and asked “why do you let him talk to you like that!?” I have to tell him the truth – I didn’t hear/notice it. It’s so easy as a parent to tune out your kids. I do this more than I should, but I don’t allow myself to stress about it because (again), we’re just trying to survive here. I could go on for hours about all the things I’m doing wrong, but it’s not worth it to beat myself up over most of them. I have to accept that I’m doing the best I can. My kids are (mostly) well behaved in public when it matters. They don’t run around like banshees (all that much). They don’t throw tantrums in the middle of the commissary aisles. We’re doing all right and that has to be enough when their dad is deployed. We sometimes have to pick up the pieces of the messes I create with my shoddy parenting, but at least everyone is still alive when he comes back!
