“You’re a terrible mother.”
“You suck at this.”
“Well, you screwed up again.”
“Everyone else has it together. Why don’t you?”
Would you say these words to your friends? To your kids?
Of course not. You wouldn’t even say them to a stranger. But I’m guessing you’ve said them, or something similar, to yourself at some point. I know I certainly have.
Every time I yelled at my daughters, fed them mac and cheese for dinner yet again, or forgot to put a change of clothes in their cubbies at school, I would think those very thoughts. I would regularly berate myself for my parenting failures, both real and imagined, often without even realizing it.
In effect, I was trying to bully myself into being a better parent.
You can read the rest of this post over on Seleni.org.
