My life hasn't exactly been "mainstream".  Right from the day I was born, mainstream wasn't really going to be my thing, but that's a whole other story to be told some other time.

My life has been many things, both good and bad,  and in all those many things there is really only one true regret that I have.

I regret that I wished time away when  my boys were little.   Now that they are teenagers I miss those little boys like crazy.   Sure they were noisy, whiny, messy, feral - but on the flipside they were beautiful, loving, cute as buttons, sweet and just so innocent.  

I read many blogs of mums with young children and I find myself wishing to be back there.  Whilst at the same time I can sense those mums are wishing they might be in the same place I am.  Self sufficient children who leave me plenty of time to get on with my own life.

This is how I see it.

The longer I am a parent and the more I watch what is happening to our world in terms of violence, crime and desperation, the more I believe, as parents, we have lost the art of relying on our own instincts when it comes to bringing up our children.

By this I mean, remembering how we were brought up, relying on our own values and having an understanding of what it is we really want for our children - not what the world "expects" us to want for our children.   I'm not saying that a change in parenting can fix all the problems in the world, and I also know there are many socio-economic factors that come into play that can't be fixed easily.   However as a fairly mainstream parent, I feel that we have lost the ability to be ordinary, which is resulting in our children growing up with over inflated expectations of what the world should be offering them.

I believe most kids are too pampered and are not being taught to tough things out and I put my hand up as being totally guilty of doing this.  I am a divorced parent and have two teenage boys. I have see-sawed between disciplining and pampering my children for the last 10 years.  Why do I do this? Because I feel guilty. Why do I feel guilty? Because I receive so much information about being a perfect parent and when I fail I feel guilty and pamper my children in an attempt to alleviate this guilt. I also do it because my children aren’t with both parents all the time. I do it because I work long hours and can’t spend as much time with them as I think I should. I suffer from “mother guilt” which I believe should be extended to be called “parent guilt” because I'm sure many dad's feel the same.