This week’s edition in the Parenting Win vs Parenting Fail series features the lovely Mumtaz Saley. Mumtaz runs a stunning lifestyle and parenting blog over at Lifestyle by M. Over to you … She is really funny, very real, and if you want some stunning pictures to look at do pop over to her Instagram Profile.

If this is your first time reading one of these, it’s a series I started a few months ago with the purpose of featuring a mom (or dad) who is willing to share a Parenting Win story and a Parenting Fail story. The “Parenting Win” stories are where mom’s get to brag about their greatest achievement as a mom. These tend to be really small achievements to everyone else, but to the mom involved they are huge! The “Parenting Fail” stories are stories where you felt like you really dropped the ball (mine was a doozy!). The point is to make other parents realise that there is no such thing as a #PerfectParent. We all make mistakes but we learn from them and move on.

Being a parent. 

Being a parent is insanely difficult, by far no books or family members ever tell you the truth. Like most mums out there I’m winging it. Parenthood is not about planning but taking things as it comes. 

So I will start with my #Parentingfail moment. 

Parenting Fail 

I have about ten parents fail moments a day, between the five hundred odd things I have to do daily I am sure to screw up. 

So this week I bought my seven-year old a cup, nothing special, but he really wanted it. 

So we get home and wash the cup out and here he is ready to drink out of it. Happily he gets water out and pours it into his cup, his sister who is two watches him and attacks him for his cup. I was extremely exhausted, so I did nothing. Instead I sat watching them fight over a cup of water. Still doing nothing I got a phone call from my Neighbor asking if I am home as my kids are screaming. So the lady next door has five small kids and you never hear her scream, ever, or her kids. Quickly I rush to tell my kids to keep quiet, I tell her all is well. At that moment I felt like I have failed my neighborhood simply because I was too tired to referee the situation. That day I decided to sit in the car and have a chocolate by myself while the kids fight it out in epic battle of who gets to drink water out of the new cup. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BY_A5VnH7Ci/?taken-by=lifestylebyms 

Parenting Win

There are many #ParentingWin moments to choose, from cashing in on the Barney ‘I love You’ song, which ends in my kids hugging me, to my most favorite which is juggling time between two kids who both need my attention. Since my son was the only kid for a long time he really felt it when his sister was born. So every day I go and fetch him from school, and we just sit for a few minutes and talk about his day while eating chocolate cookies. I know it not the best thing but it is the moment I look forward to the most in my day. Even if my husband opts to do the school run, I always say no, because it the one thing I can do for my son to make him feel like the most important person in my life. 

It’s not easy when you have more than one kid, smaller children need you more compared to the older ones. In essence all kids, no matter how old they are, require your attention. 

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Thanks Mumtaz. You are so right, our kids need us all the time, I still need my mom so even though my two are only little still I realise that the role of being needed by your kids will never end. As for your fail … I actually think that’s a win. We can’t be hushing our kids their entire lives, they are human too. We all need to let it out sometimes. Thanks so much for sharing your stories with us.

Please do go any check out “Lifestyle by M”.

Blog: www.lifestylebyms.wordpress.com

Instagram: @lifestylebyms

If you’d like to be featured, please do get in touch with me. Don’t forget to check out the past few weeks series as well to find some other great bloggers!