Attention Mediocre Moms! Enjoy a Guest Blog and Free e-Book Opportunity from Diane Mierzwik

Back by popular demand! It’s another blog from one of our favorite guest bloggers, Diane Mierzwik. The blog post below is an excerpt from Diane’s new Kindle book, “Weekly Affirmations for Mediocre Moms. ”  Diane is offering the book for free on her website to readers who sign up for the blog. Otherwise, it costs $1.99 through Amazon. We encourage you to sign up for the blog. You’ll be glad you did. Visit www.dianemierzwik.net for more information. Be sure to tell her the Shut Up Sisters sent you.

I’d like to think that I’m a better parent than my parents were, but it’s not like there’s a book that tells you how to parent. Now there are books, lots of them, that tell you how to do this thing called parenting, but they weren’t around when my parents were parents.

We probably all reflect on the way we were raised and try to avoid what we thought were mistakes. Like the time my mom left me at a liquor store waiting to be picked up until she was done with her evening chores. Did I mention it was dark and at a liquor store, where men came to buy – liquor? Or the time…actually I’m having a difficult time thinking of anything to complain about. And that’s the point.

My parents didn’t have books and classes they could attend to be better parents. They had the way they were raised.

Of course, by my memory, I was a great, easy kid. Sure there was that one time I informed my mom at 8:30 pm that I had volunteered to bring cupcakes for the entire class the next day. Or the time I drove to the beach when I told her I was just driving to the nearby lake. Oh, and that time she had to pick me up from the sheriff station because I’d been picked up on a truancy sweep.

My friend, another self-proclaimed mediocre mom, told me how her daughter went to a local fair and won a goldfish. Well, she didn’t want to carry around this goldfish all day and couldn’t her mom, my friend, come pick up the goldfish? The fair was 20 miles away. But, my friend got in her car and picked up the goldfish so her daughter could enjoy the rest of her day. Then the next day, they went out and spent $60 on supplies to take care of the free goldfish.

“Why did I let her go to that damn fair anyway?” We both laughed. Then we pondered. Do you make the kid carry the goldfish all day? Do you make her purchase all the supplies to keep the goldfish? Do you talk her into giving the goldfish away? Do you make her come home the first time you drive to the fair or let her stay and drive back that evening as planned to pick her up? In which parenting book do you find the answers to these dilemmas?

Parents today do have books to read and classes to attend. But I have yet to find in the glossary of a parenting book or on the syllabus of a parenting class the topic: “Child wins goldfish at fair twenty miles away and wants you to pick it up.”

I always joke with my friends that my kid has two funds, a college fund and a therapy fund, because I know that no matter how hard I’ve  tried , he’s going to look back and think, “Wow, why  did she do that?”

I’ve learned that raising kids is not a science, it is an art and you work with what you’ve got and do the best you can.

Yes, I do want to be a better parent than my parents, but I realize that this is a bit of a delusion, the delusion of hope for the future, that it improves with each generation.

All I can hope is that someday he’ll have his own kids, like I did, and, God-willing, at some point he’ll understand.