We live in a vast world that allows us to parent in many ways. You may parent the way you were brought up. Either by habit, love for the way you were parented or maybe you're doing the complete opposite of what your parents did with you.
As long as your children are first safe and second happy, I think you're doing the right thing!
Our family (my husband, our children and I) live a very old school lifestyle. We've adopted the "stereotypical" rolls of dad goes off to work and mom stays home with the children. Some days are tough, but it works for us. We don't judge other families that require both parents to work and we hope that we're not judge either. You have to do what makes your heart happy while at the same time making sure everyone is taken care of. Life (financially) could be easier with us both working but we'd rather struggle a bit to always have someone home with the kids. That's one of our sacrifices.
This past weekend we traveled to a neighboring city about 100km away to attend a karate seminar. My husband and my daughter were both taking this seminar. Emmett was going to stay with my mom for the night as it takes a bit of the stress off of us to travel tantrum free. But, when Emmett woke up on Friday he was unable to keep anything down. Not even water. I'm calling it the "mystery illness" as he had zero symptoms of anything. Between the vomiting he was in high spirits and bouncing off of the walls. We made the decision to bring him with us, in case he continued to be sick into the night. Added stress on us is better than him being stressed and sick with us away. But of course, he was perfectly fine once we go there.
It is very rare that we leave our children with anyone, and really it's only my parents. We don't go out much without them. We have many good reasons for this. We're older and our social life now revolves around our children. I'd rather spend time with them making sure they are happy and mostly safe. I hate that we now have access to read all about teenagers drinking and partying status' that they post onto Facebook. This shows me that there's really no one good enough in my books to watch my children. I do hope that one day I can find that responsible youth. I have my eyes on a few, but time will tell and we're certainly not hurting by staying in. Another sacrifice?
After writing this, now maybe they aren't really sacrifices and just duties of being a parent. What have you sacrificed? Does sanity count?
