Alison Curtis: Stay away from Instagram - just make sure your kid knows you love them

Each generation of parents changes and evolves their way of parenting. We decide to ditch some “old school” ways of raising our kids and continually try new approaches. 

We also decide to hold on to skills and lessons passed down from previous generations. But what remains a constant for most of us is the struggle to feel that we are doing a good job and we are good parents, in short that we are good enough.

A frustrating and draining by-product of becoming a parent unfortunately is self-doubt and worry that we are doing things “right.” From the moment they are born this hamster on a wheel starts spinning in our brains. 

And with each milestone, our children pass a new set of worries that will enter our field of vision, with barely any time to look back and appreciate that we have been doing a great job.

Plus now more than ever we have more ways of accessing information about parenting styles, advice and psychology on raising our kids. 

There are of course positives to this but the one downside that I can see after years of reading and watching is it can reinforce this negative thought process that we aren’t doing enough.

My advice is twofold, first stay far away from Insta parents with their perfect shots of family life, with just a dusting of flour on each of the kids' noises as they bake chia scones in a perfectly white kitchen with not a fish finger in sight! Because those influences will never make you feel “good enough.”

Also those many many blogs, magazine articles and podcasts that try to label styles of parenting I have often found left me deflated. So find your trusted sources of information and stick to them. The places that provide valuable and helpful advice and that you also get comfort from. 

Obviously, this can be from family, friends, peer groups or online, where ever it is you, your involvement with them has to be positive.

My second piece of advice is, take time to check in with your kids, each day. I look at my daughter Joan, I look at how she seems, how she is behaving and assess her moods.

I make a point of having proper conversations across the week whereby I am asking her questions on the topic she is leading. I know life can be busy, especially with multi-kid households where everyone is juggling work and home life. 

But we need to be available to our kids to have time to really go through the things that are on their minds. These are the moments that shape them and the opportunities for us as parents to give them the skills to work out problems themselves and ultimately build their confidence and to keep them happy.

There are days whereby other aspects of our lives as parents can get on top of us. Pressures from work, extended family or friends. We all are guilty of spreading ourselves too thin. And those are the times when we are left feeling that as parents we aren’t fulfilling all the aspects of being a mom or a dad. 

But we shouldn’t feel this way. Again go back to the basics. If your children going to bed healthy and happy then you are doing a great job.

After all, I can’t guarantee each day that Joan has eaten a piece of fruit or brushed her teeth twice but what I can guarantee each day is that she is fed, she is well-rested and most of all happy. 

Plus I can say with a thousand per cent certainty that she knows she is loved, and the absolute centre of our world and that makes me “good enough.”