Confessions of a slacker mom

I read an excerpt from a new parenting book the other day. It's written by a pediatrician who's also a mom, named Meg Meeker. Her book is called, The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers: Reclaiming Our Passion, Purpose, and Sanity.

The following is from the introduction of her book:
"We are a group that wants desperately to be good at what we do. We want to be good to our friends and husbands and we want to be great to our kids. We love intensely and we work hard. But we have a problem.......

.......We stress over how well we are parenting and if we are taking full advantage of other opportunities. But mostly, we worry about what we can do for our kids in order to make their lives better. We do this because we really want to be good at mothering. We want to get it right, just as we want to get our jobs right.

This need — to get parenting right — has become an obsession for many of us. It consumes our thinking, our energy, and our time. Let me be clear: Striving to be a great mom is a noble goal, and as a pediatrician, I applaud those who choose it. But that’s not what I’m referring to. I am talking about a full-blown obsession with getting mothering right. And it is taking many of us down.

We have become competitors. We have learned over the past twenty-five years to compete with other mothers and compete with ourselves. The problem is, none of us feels as though we’re winning."

When you hang out with other moms, it's nearly impossible not to enter the competition. You're always internally wondering how you measure up, whether your kids are as happy and well-adjusted as those of your friends, and whether you're making all the right choices when it comes to feeding and dressing and entertaining them.

I have a few confessions to make, just because I want to get them off my chest. I don't think any of these things make me a bad mom, but all the same, doubts creep in from time to time when I hear so many other people talking about the right things they do.

- We don't shop or eat organic. Or have a desire to.
- We don't eat enough vegetables.
- I feed my kids hot dogs and deli meat.
- I don't feel terribly bad about letting them have kids meals at fast food joints.
- I let Justin drink Sprite almost every time we go out to dinner as a family.
- We probably have too much TV time.
- I don't like to cook - heck, I don't even like being in the kitchen. So we have a lot of convenience foods instead of homemade goodness.
- I don't really read parenting books, mostly because I don't have time.

I really need to stop comparing myself to other moms. We're all unique and will do the things that we're comfortable doing. And I love my boys to pieces.