My Parenting Mistakes OMG! There Are So Many

Being a parent, at the best of times is incredibly hard. Nothing is easy about it. It’s like no other job in the world. There is no training and so often no guidance, so it’s no surprise that people can be overcome with this 24/7 job that you have embarked upon. The biggest problem with being a mum or dad is that you never really know what your children are going to do next, which of course so often makes you look like you have made yet another mistake as a parent.

A while ago I read a brilliant post by Tom who blogs at Diary of the Dad. It was called, My Top 10 Parenting Fails. It got me thinking about how many fails or mistakes I have made as a dad. Actually, I lost count a long time ago. So here are a selection of my fails and mistakes I have made as a dad.

One moment that springs to my mind instantly when I think of mistakes I have made as a parent, happened when my twin girls were about six months old. My wife was having a lie-in on this particular morning, so I was parenting on my own, and I managed to bang one of my twin girls head on the radiator behind the sofa. She also had a sticky eye so I went and got the solution for washing her eyes, but what I thought was the eye solution was actually Milton sterilisation solution. It wasn’t until later when I asked my wife what it was that I realised why my baby daughter was not happy when I was bathing her eyes. It took me 6 months to tell my wife what I had done that day!

On another occasion my other twin girl was very poorly and vomiting almost every half an hour. We left it thinking she would eventually get better. Needless to say she didn’t get any better and our decision to leave her, left her being hospitalised for four days with a serious infection that needed anti-biotics via an IV. It taught me to never put something off, and to act quickly next time, especially when it comes to health, because children deteriorate very quickly. Thankfully she recovered well.

My final moment happened when we were on holiday at a Haven camp. The twins were about two years old and we were in the arcade area. I was trying to get change for the girls to play on the penny machines, which happened to be not working properly. I knew my daughter, R, was next to me, but I was focused on sorting out the change that I didn’t realise she had walked off. She was following a couple out of the complex obviously thinking it was me and her mum. For that split second, I totally panicked because I couldn’t see her instantly. It was a gut wrenching moment, but thankfully I spotted her quick enough and scooped her up in my arms, but in today’s world you just never know, and this was a very busy place.

Being a parent is wonderful and something I consider that I had a calling to do, be a dad, but it so often has moments of failures and mistakes, because being a dad is a learning curve that you never quite reach the end of.

I have learnt after 22 years of being a dad and having five children to never beat yourself up for an error of judgment or mistake. I learnt from them, and never repeated the same mistake again. I usually make completely different mistakes instead, haha!

Parenting is very difficult! Who would choose it as job? Would you?