Mental Health Day

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone could call in a "Mental Health Day" whenever they just really needed a break? Just like a time out from life. I'm pretty sure that some moms do get this luxury, but I'm am not one of them. Sure, I have very supportive friends and family that are always willing to lend a hand. My mom and my mother in law will usually watch my kids at the drop of a hat, if I need them to. However, calling in the troops to help take care of your kids also invokes a certain amount of guilt. Guilt that you can't hang tough with your kids, guilt that you're asking already busy people to come and take care of your children, and guilt that you really just need a break from your usually great kids.

Mothering is about the same thing everyday. Day in and day out; no matter your mood, or what happened the night before, or what's going to happen next week. Your kids need you to be some sort of normal consistent person everyday. That is a really hard thing to do some days!! I think with any job some days seem to click, you get a lot accomplished, your in high spirits, and a great deal of satisfaction comes from that. Other days, you just can't seem to focus, or have a hard time getting the job done. Usually there is some easy way to fake it thru a 9-5, you can get by until you get home...where you can zone out in front of the tv with a cold beverage and a pan of brownies. But, when you're the mom, it's not like that. You don't just need to make it thru the day to get home to relax. The kids need you to be awake and alert and ready to care for them, no matter what. For working moms I'm sure it's really hard to have a bad day at work and then come home to make dinner, do the laundry, and get the kids a bath and off to bed. For stay at home moms it's just as hard...because, your kids were there for the bad day too. They were there when you let cleaning up the lunch mess slide because you were having a bad day. They were there when you scolded too roughly for a small offense because you were just too tired to deal with one more whining moment. They say that parenting is a series of tiny moments lined up to make a childhood for your kids. The scary thing is, you don't know if you're creating enough of those small happy moments to cancel out the bad grumpy moments, and sometimes you can only take it one moment at a time.