Mom guilt

This is the sweet face of a tired toddler. He is sleeping about 14 or so hours a day between nighttime and nap time and the other 10 hours are so full of activity. It is funny to think of sleeping 14 hours a day though! 

Hunter and I went to the library for Baby and Me story and song time yesterday. It is a hilarious mess of infants and toddlers crawling, walking, and running around a conference room while two sweet librarians try to get everyone engaged in an activity. Every child development class should have to attend one of these functions. 

Have mothers always been so insecure about their parenting skills and embarrassed over their children's imperfect behavior? I think "mom guilt" is very real, but I wonder if the age of the internet and social media where we know too much about other people's fake perfect lives fosters feelings of insecurity in mothers that is stronger than ever before. I ask because I've met two mothers and I know that one mother "can't get my son to walk" (he literally just turned one years old) and one mother "had to leave a play date yesterday because she wouldn't stop pushing" (the daughter is 21 months old). While I'm grateful to know that other mothers don't have it all together either and are consumed by worry about their children as am I, I also think those are strong lead-ins to conversation. Are we so isolated as singular families now that we are just desperate for others to connect with? But, does saying these things in front of our children hinder there development instead of inspiring it? 

Regardless, while I'm discussing the worries of a mother, I'm anxious for Hunter to begin using more words. He will occasionally say "mama" or "dada," but rarely will he do so and he's technically supposed to be using many more. I alternate between wearing myself out carrying on a one-sided conversation with him ("Hunter, where's your ball? Can you say 'ball?' Can you kick the ball? Can you catch the ball?) and getting lost in my own thoughts and forgetting that there is silence. I've never been uncomfortable with silence, a trait I learned from my father, and I get overstimulated quite easily. I actually hugged Hunter today and hoped to squeeze a word out of him in my magical thinking. It didn't work and he just continued to play. Joke's on me with that one. 

There is so much worry associated with everything though. I worry because I often forgot to do tummy time and I would lay him on his boppy and forget to put colorful things near him for him to look at and I almost never remembered to turn on the sweet mobile above his bed. I just survived the first weeks and months and year for that matter and I worry that it wasn't enough. I remember reading in a child development book years ago something to the effect of, parenting doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough. I remember thinking that was wonderful news, but now I'm frankly just hoping for good enough. Perfect isn't even an option.