Why you need to become
a half arsed parent BY SUSIE OBRIEN
W
my sister - like wearing budgie smugglers as daywear and cementing things into the ground.
Back then, we knew less, we cared less, we did less. We didn’t have play dates, we played with all the kids in the neighbourhood. We rode home when it got dark, not forgetting to grab some smokes for our parents from the shops on the way.
I also can’t imagine my mum putting love notes in my lunchbox, capturing every sporting disappointment on camera or giving me veggies fanned out like a rainbow for dinner like parents are expected to do today.
Over the next few decades, mums and dads forgot about freedom and fun and the need to raise kids that are strong and resilient.
Nor would my parents feel guilty for doing things I do, like skipping pages of my kids’ readers so I can get them to bed faster or getting take-away for dinner again. Oh, and using the clothes dryer when it’s sunny and pretending I’m working when I’m really watching Bridgerton on my laptop. (Told you I’ve got lots of guilt.)
hen I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, kids were free-range, like the underarm hair.
And they forgot to relax and enjoy parenting. As a working mother of three kids and two stepkids, I know what it’s like to feel stressed, guilty and over-stretched. We love our kids – it’s parenting we have a problem with. We’ve become so wrapped up in our children’s lives that we forget to have lives of our own. It wasn’t like that when I was young. My dad had better things to do than live his life through me and
It’s time to do things differently and embrace a half-arsed approach. We need to stop being helicopter parents and become half-arsed parents. Half-arsed parenting is about doing half as much and knowing it is still more than enough. It’s not
35
