Things I Do Regularly as a Bad Mom

The narrative in my head and the rules I break

“Ugh, I’m sorry, baby! Mommy’s a bad mommy!” This is the crappy thing I say out loud too regularly and I’m starting to catch myself. It used to be that my daughter couldn’t understand what I was saying so I’d say whatever I wanted. I’d pass a cyclist blocking a crosswalk and audibly say, “See, some people suck at sidewalk etiquette!” to my daughter in the sweet voice reserved for her. My girl might not be talking much yet but her understanding of what I’m saying is very present and clear. So when I call myself a bad mom, she’s likely learning that I associate those two words together in a way I shouldn’t.

Who would I be if I was the perfect mother? The perfect mother is at the playground in her pristine white tee and designer jeans, toes and nails freshly painted, her kid spotless and snacking on apple slices from the local market. She’s wearing Celine sunglasses on her head, just like the ones I used to wear. She calls over her shoulder, “let’s go, sweetie, time for gymnastics!” — the same gymnastics class I failed to sign up for in time. Her kid is not eating Earth’s Best Organic Crunchy Sticks, cheesy flavor. Earth’s Best my ass.

I don’t plan to ever call my daughter “bad.” She will never hear me say the words “you’re being bad.” I might say “you’re not behaving kindly or appropriately” but I will not be a mother who calls her children bad, so why is it I call myself bad? And the reality is, I believe I’m actually a very good mom, I just happen to be critical of all the ways I’m not a textbook perfect parent.

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10 things I do regularly as a bad mom:

I use my phone/ talk on my phone: I have tried so very hard to reduce my phone use and I believe I have! While we play, my phone is in another room. I considered getting the Brick and I know people who swear by it! But I hope I can be content with just not having my phone on me, without relying on another device to limit my time on my main annoying device. However, I am imperfect and I require my phone to place orders for things, to check the weather, to make doctors appointments and book the dog for a groom. I could lie and tell you I only do this kind of admin during naps but there are simply not enough hours in the day. I really hoped my daughter wouldn’t get used to a rectangle in front of my facial expressions but some things can’t wait. This is how the world works now, with screens. Just this morning, my daughter was waving to someone on their phone from her stroller and it took forever for the man to look up from his phone and wave back. There will be screens all around her forever and I won’t shame myself when I also need to rely on technology to keep our world functioning. But you bet your bottom dollar that as soon as my kid can say, “mommy, look!” I’ll be looking up. The phone isn’t all bad. My girl might not totally understand what the phone is but she knows it’s an important, magical rectangle that brings grandma and grandpa to us every day via FaceTime and helps us bring our favorite songs with us wherever we go and makes sure daddy can find us when he needs to. What a terrible mother I am, letting a device dictate so much of our lives.

I forget sunscreen: I’m bad at wearing sunscreen myself, let alone putting it on my baby every 90 minutes. We leave the house with a sunscreen stick in every bag. And then we go visit one splash pad and then another and we alternate between sun and shade. I do remember sometimes and feel like mother of the year when I do! A nanny in our playgroup shamed me the other day: “Baby so tan! Need more sunscreen!” Oh do calm down! We were also just on holiday! I’m getting defensive here, because sunscreen is important and I’m thrilled my daughter won’t grow up believing that to be tan is to be beautiful. In my day, we oiled our bodies up and cooked in the sun with a playboy bunny sticker on the hip to make something cute of our tan lines. My girl has my skin, we drink up the sun. I really must do a better job with her sunscreen, although, when the day comes that she starts getting her first freckles, they’ll be my favorite little dots of sun, all over this little light of mine. That nanny looks at me and thinks — there goes that terrible mother with the tan baby.

A splash pad hates to see her coming.

We watch loads of screen time: Okay, maybe not loads. But a Bluey episode here, a few minutes of Sesame Street there, and plenty of music videos. I’m alone all day, and sometimes mommy just needs two damn minutes to unload the dishwasher without a tiny human crawling inside. It wasn’t that long ago that our daughter didn’t have much of an attention span for the TV but now, she goes straight to where we keep the remote and demands songs with moving pictures. We keep a heavy rotation of Hop Little Bunnies, Five Little Ducks, Olivia Dean, Beyonce and Bear Necessities. I’m actually very proud of her eclectic taste.

TRL dance party in the living room!

I forget the baby’s water bottle: I didn’t hydrate myself properly until I had a tiny human whose food supply depended on my hydration. As soon as our girl could use a straw, I felt like I didn’t need to pack her water bottle for a quick trip down the block. And if she got thirsty, we could bop into any coffee shop for a water with a straw. This is actually one of my favorite things because she feels like she’s getting a treat with mama, drinking from the same kind of cup. Our regular coffee shop even gives her a short little paper straw. Our second favorite coffee shop happily cuts the straw in half for her water and if that’s not grade A hospitality, I don’t know what is. But get this — another mom called me out for the microplastics in single use straws. Exposing my baby to microplastics already?! What a terrible mother. A good mother would have ordered a silicone or stainless steel straw by now.

The teeny tiny hands on the teeny tiny cup!

I overdress and underdress the baby: I still haven’t figured out how many layers our toddler needs and I’m starting to think there’s no definitive answer. The guidelines say “one more layer than what you need.” Whelp. I run cold and baby girl runs hot. But her cheeks are red! Maybe go inside! Her arms are cold, where is her sweater! I do my best to pack the second outfit and pack the layers for wild and unexpected natural disasters but I’m afraid my best is the best I can do. Here’s hoping I figure it out before baby #2.

My tan girl with her paci, enjoying a strawberry from the market.

I allow paci whenever and wherever: For those reading this outside of the United States, this is our term for the suss, dummy, binky, dodie and any other cute term used for pacifiers. The nanny down the hall sees my girl with her pacifier in her mouth, gets down to her level sweetly and rips it out, saying, “No, no, no, you’re a big girl now!” And in that moment, it takes all of me not to smack her hand like I’m reprimanding her right back. Don’t tell my daughter she can’t have her pacifier! I do like this nanny, she’s generally very kind and lovely and I know she means well. I feel the judgement right away because this woman has been working with babies her whole career and what the heck do I know? I’m just her mother of fourteen months, still very much a rookie. I smile sheepishly and say something like “she’s teething” or “she had a rough night and needs her comfort.” The dentist told me we’re good with paci until she’s 3, what do I care if her teeth get a little funky. Her dad and I both had braces and those years built character. I should add I didn’t particularly like the dentist we saw, that silly human told me to wipe our daughter’s gums after breastfeeding every time. HAHAHAHAHA!! But as long as she’s cool with the paci until age 3, I won’t be yanking my daughter’s away just yet, the reckless mother I am.

I’m liberal with the Tylenol: Twenty teeth! Why on EARTH do babies have TWENTY TEETH! We have eight so far and each one has brought me to the brink of tears! I was told to refrain from giving Tylenol unless baby is inconsolable from teething pain. Well, what if mother is inconsolable from a fussy baby that refuses to sleep on account of said pain. It’s a sneaky pain, isn’t it? Our girl could be perfectly fine all day and as soon as I lay her down to go night night, the pressure of her gums consumes her and she’s struggling to find a comfortable position, threatening to suffocate herself with her face down on the sheet. So the awful mother I am, I give her Tylenol and nurse her to sleep in my arms, singing her the sleepy head song I made up months ago. And this is the evil way I plan to handle the remaining twelve teeth. We’ve just entered the breakthrough of the molars, may they have mercy on us all.

I give in to tantrums: I wasn’t prepared for tantrums so early on. If I take something away, turn off one of our favorite songs too soon, turn on the wrong song, try to force bedtime, or do anything at all wrong, there’s a brief tantrum. This stage we’re currently in is the hardest yet. We’re so close to communication with real words and yet, we’re in this phase of screaming until mom and dad miraculously guess the right thing, sometimes obvious and sometimes less obvious. But when I know what the thing is, even if I don’t want to give in, I do. Because I’d rather budge than listen to the screaming and the discomfort. But shouldn’t you be teaching your child the word no by now? I tell her this — when mommy says no, she’s keeping you safe. Can we run into the road? Nope. Can we eat the sand from Brooklyn’s finest public “beaches”? No thank you. She will learn the word “no” when and where it’s important, I will put my foot down, I just don’t feel like I need to yet. She’s mischief on wheels, she knows the word, she knows when she shouldn’t swim in the dog bowl or tug at the charging chords mommy failed to hide. But if it’s a few more minutes of this and that and it won’t hurt me or her, her happiness is my happiness, or at least peace from the shrieking.

We do bedtime too late for a baby: Our daughter has been going to bed with the sun lately. Sometimes at 8pm, sometimes 8:30pm or even 9pm. If she’s not ready to sleep, I don’t see the point of letting her lay there lallygagging for an hour plus when we could be reading books or playing quietly in her room, getting a little more time with dad. We’ve recently started this lovely habit of taking the dog for a walk along the pier near our place. We head out at 8pm, we leave phones behind and enjoy a little de-stimulation and fresh air before I start the full bedtime routine. We get a few looks from concerned folks — what’s a baby doing outside at this hour? Shouldn’t she be in bed at this hour? Mind your business, ma’am. Who decided babies need to be in bed by 7pm anyway? I’m sure there’s some logic or science to this that I don’t have the urge to verify, but I do know that when our child goes to bed on the later side, she sleeps through the night. Once I see she’s tired, we lay down to go to bed, I nurse her and she’s out in usually 5 ish minutes. Perhaps some sleep consultant will tell me in the comments how I’m overstimulating her past exhaustion and I’m doing it all wrong and maybe I am. But it seems to work for us — the cruelty of keeping a child awake so late!

The evening family walk, view isn’t terrible either.

I find new hills to die on: I have plenty of rules for myself as a parent. I will die on this hill, small devices are different from large devices and our kid will NOT have a tablet for as long as I can help it. There was a time I thought we’d avoid big screens too and I’ve changed my mind on this one, seeing as our big screen time is more intentional. We swear we won’t let her eat and watch TV but I also did that this morning. I needed some help from Elmo to wash a few more dishes and eat something myself. So that rule has been modified to: We’ll never have the TV on during dinner! Until we do, for one reason or another. My husband and I currently never watch TV during dinner, this is sacred family time for catching up and enjoying each other’s company but there might come a day when we’re both at capacity and we need Daniel the Tiger or Dua Lipa to inspire our toddler to eat something, FFS! I’m not against bargaining and in case parenting hasn’t humbled me enough, every hill I swore I’d die on has started to comfort me, like, hey girl, there’s actually a few trails on this hill. And they’re all pretty okay. You’re not so terrible after all, mama.

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So why are we so hard on ourselves as parents? We are hard on ourselves because the world has opinions about our children and those opinions trick us into thinking we’re doing this whole parenting thing wrong, a job that comes with zero instructions and plenty of outdated information called “advice.” I feel like I get a full court press of judgements from the nannies and the playground moms and random strangers who are suddenly self-proclaimed parenting experts. My skin is tough enough to be told I’m doing it all wrong, my own judgements are what thin my skin. I parent the way I do because I love my daughter so stinking much that the smallest of failures feel huge and I wish I could carry on mothering without an ounce of doubt. I wish I could mother with certainty and confidence but then I’m not sure I could call myself a mother at all.

I must stop calling myself a BAD mom. A friend said this to me today: “Every aspect of parenting has turned into all or nothing. It drives me crazy!” There are plenty of other ways I can convince myself I’m a bad mom, I microwave my baby’s food, I let her eat fried things, we don’t brush her teeth every night, I’ve given up on clipping her fingernails, I don’t always buy organic produce, I don’t mind that the dog licks her snacks but I do feel badly about the dog hair consuming everything she owns.

I hope we can forgive ourselves for all the ways we believe we’re screwing our kids up because no one cares more than we do as mothers. No one is harder on a mother than the mother herself, and I think we can all stand to cut it out. I’m an imperfect person but I’m a really good mom. And you’re a good mom.

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I leave you with this: I’ve always loved the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. With respect to Miss Oliver, I’ve taken a stab at writing a version for my fellow bad mothers. I am not a poet so perhaps I should have left this one alone, but if nothing else, it was an exercise in writing a little apology to myself and any mom who has cared enough to call herself a failure.

A hundred-ring stump

You do not have to be the perfect mother.
You do not have to remember the sunscreen
or know if all those tiny square dots of light are harmless or hazardous, or know the exact number of layers for comfort.
You only have to be the love your love calls love
Tell me about the ways you’ve failed today,
and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile their world keeps spinning on.
Meanwhile, your dearest is learning your voice when you call yourself bad
The same voice that sings melodies and soothes—
Meanwhile, the sun is out and the fruit is ripe, just at the top of the grass hill
The one we swore we’d die on but roll down instead
Whoever you are, you are a mother and this motherhood is a hundred-ring stump of yeses and nos— and their world, your world, is imperfectly bright and ripe.