Note: started this post last week, forgot about it, found it again today.- supply your own past tense, I'm too lazy for a re-write.
He was sick all week with an illness possessing a queasy up and down rhythm- I'd think he was improving and take him out of the house to circumvent the onset of cabin fever only to have him crash again and end up feverish, shivering and miserable at the grocery store, or the library.
It's easy but pointless to get down on yourself for this kind of stuff.
Parenting, at least my experience of the practical side, has been a parade of mistakes and failures punctuated by occasional fanfares celebrating a rare wise choice or good decision. It's a ceaseless metronomic march with no breaks and you end up making most of your decisions based not on careful, objective consideration with a weather eye on future ramifications, but rather on instinct and intuition.
And with a shitty upbringing like mine for a foundation, you must always question those instincts and intuitions. I've worked on purifying them over the years, but still catch myself thinking stupid things or making bad decisions based on not much else than harmful nonsense peddled by my family.
You always want to be perfectly right about everything regarding your child, and it's hard not to take each misstep and flawed assumption to heart, an indictment of your parenting. But parents can't afford that kind of self flagellation- children need parents, not whimpering balls of neuroses.
Sometimes that means you end up pushing your shivering kid around Target when they ought to be home in bed.
Bad decision? Yep.
Will I do that again? No, but I will make different, equally bad decisions which I'll also need to forgive myself for.
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