Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the ‘perfect parent’. The perfect parent is everywhere.
You’ll find the perfect parent in TV ads. She’s the mum wiping her house free of all microorganisms. He’s the dad patiently teaching his four-year-old to ride a bike.
You’ll see many perfect parents on Instagram and Facebook. They’re the ones baking biscuits on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Or relaxing on the beach while their little ones build sandcastles. They don’t cut sandwiches into squares or triangles — they make them into fun animal shapes.
But the weird thing about perfect parents is that even though they are everywhere they don’t actually exist.
No one is perfect. Sorry.
You can certainly have ‘perfect’ moments.
I bake with my children and it IS fun but then they whinge for the entire 35 minutes that the cake is in the oven. I wouldn’t share that on Facebook. I love taking my kids to the beach but the baby just eats the sand and it becomes exhausting trying to stop her devouring fistful after fistful. Once I made a sandwich look like a house and my 2YO cried because it didn’t have a door. I took a big bite out of it — “now there’s a door”. She cried louder. She wanted that bite back.
Of course we should all try to be good parents, even great ones, but there’s no point trying to be something that is impossible.
That’s why, after we came up with the idea of creating these beautiful bedtime routine printables for the site, I also decided to design my own inspirational wall art. It is just as beautiful but it doesn’t make me feel bad when my life isn’t ‘Pinterest-worthy’.
Sometimes our bedtime routine is like the first poster below, but more often it’s a version of the second.
The perfect bedtime routine
Bedtime at my house …
This is my more realistic poster. It is based on my own bedtime chaos – which I won’t call a ‘routine’ even though bedtime is routinely chaotic in my house!.
Does this sound more like it? This is based on real events. You couldn’t make this stuff up!
You can download our Perfect Bedtime Routine printable in Blue and Pink.
Image credit: Prometeus/123RF Stock Photo
Maureen 
Holly Easterby 
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