Mother's Guilt

Lately I have been having a lot of "Mother's Guilt". And really I think if you were on the outside looking in, you would say it is not called for. But, if you are a Mother, you probably know what I'm talking about. We have a tendency to beat ourselves up for things which most of the time are out of our control.
I guess what might have triggered this for me recently was my birthday. Normally I don't hardly go out without my daughter, date nights or girls night out are very rare. But, I had a birthday two weekends ago and I wanted to celebrate. So, my cousins took me out one night for sushi, the next night I went out with my fiance, brother & some friends to Lime & out bowling. Well, the Mr. and I also celebrated our 12 year anniversary right around the same time so this past weekend him & I went to see Kevin Hart, which by the way was HILARIOUS!! Then I also had already scheduled a sushi dinner with some other girlfriends to celebrate my birthday as well. By the time that date rolled around I felt too guilty and decided to bring my daughter. She is at the age where she is very vocal about everything and she was doing her best to make me feel bad for going out so much in the past two weeks. Oh, I forgot one other time I went out this past week........I won tickets to see the show Tap Dogs and so I took my mom to it. I didn't have the nerve to tell my daughter where I was going for that, so I told her we were going to a work event. :(



In addition to this I've been reflecting a lot on our family life, and we spend a lot of time together as a family. We eat dinner together at the dinner table every night, I read with my daughter almost every night, we spend the weekend together as a family, etc. etc....... But, sometimes I wonder how much of that time is "QUALITY TIME". Too often we get caught up in the hustle & bustle of things or we're tired, or whatever the reason may be, but sometimes we're just vegging out in front of the TV together. Which is OK sometimes, but I guess what I'm getting at is I feel like I've been slacking on really connecting with my daughter, or just doing something fun with her like playing outside, taking a bike ride or playing a board game with her. In addition to that lately I've been feeling bad for my daughter because she sits home every day after school while I'm at work (NOT ALONE), but I know she's bored. She doesn't have friends in the neighborhood and lately hasn't been called to go over any of her friends' houses or anything. And she's in 5th grade. I feel like this should be the start of her really being social. So this is adding to my guilt. I want to put her in some after school activities and help her branch out and make new friends and maybe ask them over to our house.
Anywayz........I don't usually blog about these type of topics, but I thought this might be a good way to get my feelings out and maybe others will comment and say they feel my pain. I started browsing on the Internet and found this short little article:How to Deal With Mother's Guilt eHow.com

So I'm trying to be more cognisant of this and make an effort to not be in such a bad mood when I get home from work and give my daughter that extra attention she needs. I'm also planning a little Halloween bowling party for her and some of her friends.

Have you ever felt this way???