My mum guilt was crippling – until a parenting coach recommended one thing ...Middle East

Genevieve Roberts explores the hot topics and parenting issues she encounters while raising her three children – two daughters and one son – in her weekly column, Outnumbered.

I’m one of the very few people I know whose first year of being a parent was light on guilt. I had one child, no partner and was happy for paperwork and mess to pile up around me, safe in the knowledge that my daughter Astrid didn’t give a damn. At 37, I’d waited a long time to become a mother and my focus, love and attention was undivided.

Fast forward eight years and I now have three children and a partner; maternity leave feels a distant, sleep-deprived blur of a memory, and all of us do give a damn about each other’s mess. My focus is scattered. I’d love to give Astrid, Xavi and Juno all the attention in the world and feel huge guilt that’s simply not possible – even though I rationalise that they gain from being siblings and not having me dote on them constantly.

So when parenting coach Belinda Jane Batt, author of Challenge your Guilt: How to Flourish in Motherhood, Work and Life offers me a coaching session, I’m hopeful that she might help me shake off my discomfort at not being present for everyone all the time.

I’m far from alone in this feeling: 78 per cent of mothers feel guilty for not spending more time with their children, according to a survey from parenting advice platform Good to Know.

Batt believes the emotion is hardwired into mothers through decades of social conditioning. “Modern mothers are in the eye of the storm,” she says. “It’s not the way it should be, but we’ve been conditioned to strive to be perfect mothers and perfect wives. We’re trying to do an impossible job in a societal framework that’s not fit for purpose.”

Batt explains that there are two types of guilt: the useful type, which helps us live in alignment with our values. So, for example, if I fed my children junk food constantly, I’d feel guilty because one of my values is health – and this guilt would give me a prod to change what I was feeding them. And the other, less useful kind, which is societally driven.

We start our session with me explaining our family and work situation, how we share the family load (Mark does more of the cleaning and laundry except when he’s away with work, which is around a quarter of the year, while I keep on top of family admin).

“I feel guilt that I’m not more present in everything,” I explain. I tell her how much I love work, and that I have flexibility – “I’m always the mum who volunteers to go on school trips” – but that I’m conscious my children see me on my laptop or phone.

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Ultimately I feel guilty that there isn’t enough of me to go around – ideally I would give each of my children more undivided, one-on-one attention.

Batt says quality over quantity is important for many working parents. “We don’t have the luxury of quantity,” she tells me. She asks me to work out what is genuinely achievable to create little pockets of time for each child. “Don’t set the bar really high so you’re constantly feeling that you’re falling short,” she cautions.

Schedule in one-on-one time to avoid jealousy

My husband Mark is working incredibly long hours over the next couple of months, so I cook up a plan to ask a local babysitter who the children love to help out so I can spend at least an hour separately with Astrid and Xavi weekly, where we can play Lego or bike ride, go to a café or for a swim.

It might not sound like a lot of time, but it’s a good start and I feel a lifting of stress in me. I’m also hopeful that it might quell some of the sibling arguments that arise when the children feel that they’re competing for my attention. Juno doesn’t go to nursery on a Friday and has a separate bedtime so has individual time scaffolded into her day-to-day.

Batt encourages me to reflect on my upbringing, to see how that influences my ideas of being a “good mum” and understand that things might not look the same in my family as they did in my own childhood. Reading is one area where I give myself a hard time because it was a hugely joyful part of my own childhood – and I know how important it is for children’s futures.

But while I or Mark read to the children most nights, they would far rather lose themselves in an audiobook than read to themselves and I’m frequently torn between more enforcing and meeting the children where they are. I regularly fear that what they’re doing now is going to affect what they’re doing at 18 and in their twenties and thirties.

Batt explains: “This is a really good example of both types of guilt, the helpful and the unhelpful. There’s values-based guilt because you know how important reading is for children’s futures, but I would challenge your negative thoughts: what’s most important is that you’re meeting their emotional needs.” I resolve to focus on establishing regular one-to-one time doing what the children want, and reserve my book pushing for other moments.

As a parent, practise self-compassion

The coaching session has involved hearing a lot of my own words reflected back to me and helped me realise how harsh I can be on myself. “Modelling kindness to yourself is important for your children,” Batt explains. “Remind yourself that you’re doing a good job. Most of the thoughts when we’re worrying and feeling anxious are in our imaginations. They’re not real. A lot of the failings we internalise are failings of a system that’s not set up to support us. Ask yourself: is this guilt helpful?”

I’ve arranged a babysitter from next week so I can make sure I fit in one-to-one sessions with both Astrid and Xavi. In the meantime, I’ve started noticing – and appreciating – tiny pockets of time when I can give Astrid, Xavi and Juno my undivided attention, even if it’s three minutes here and there.

I’m sure I will still feel guilt in future, both of the helpful and unhelpful variety, but addressing it has done a huge amount to remind me of all that I do for my family and to focus on the love and joy we share.

‘Challenge your Guilt: How to Flourish in Motherhood, Work and Life’ by Belinda Jane Batt is available now as an e-book and in paperback from 11 June

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