5 reasons not to feel like you are ‘a bad mother’ or ‘a Sunday father’ even if your work requires traveling a lot. Really, a lot.
Have you ever said, – jokingly, of course, – that you are a ‘terrible mother’ to your children because you are permanently flying back and force on business trips? Or that you are a ‘Sunday father’ because during the last month you’ve spent more hours on the plane than in the nursery? You can adore your children and know that you are a wonderful parent most of the times, and yet, the feeling of guilt is crawling under your skin and makes you feel like you’ve already failed your kids. Please, don’t feel that way. There’s so much you do the right way even if there is a couple time zones between you and them. But if the guilt is still there – here are 5 things that might help.
1. Quality, Not Quantity
It’s not about the amount of time we spend with your children – it’s about the quality of it. If in those hours (or even minutes) when you are together, you are together, – listening, talking, sharing, – it’s much better than constant “background presence”. Geography, in this matter, is less important than true contact with each other.
2. A Hundred Ways To Be Closer
A huge part of your child’s life is spent online. And skyping can be as important and valuable as any face-to-face conversation. All you have to do is take care of having reliable internet connection 24/7. For example, if you travel a lot, you should probably get a single SIM card that works all around the world – and the usual ‘trip guilt’ will stop torturing you.
3. Respect and distance
Oddly enough, frequent trips can provide a great help in teaching your children to respect other people’s personal space – and his own. When we tell our kids why we need to leave, we do the same job as in when the they are told to go play by because you need some rest. Knowing that sometimes other people are busy with their own things and this is not the end of the world is truly important.
4. Different Gifts
To muffle your own sense of guilt with an abundance of expensive gifts is a bad idea for both you and the kids because it marks your trips as ‘bad things’ for which your child should receive material compensation. But gifts with deep meaning are a totally different thing. Sometimes bringing a little sea pebble, telling how you missed your child during the trip and going together to a workshop to make a pebble into a charm is a thing that will bring you much closer.
5. Together Apart
If, however, your travel guilt is still there, or if you keep catching yourself thinking “I wish my child could see this…”, there is a beautiful thing called “Diary for a son” (or daughter). It does not have to consist of the full-fledged diary entries – sometimes several words are enough to remind you later of all the important things you want to share with your kid. By the way, if he or she keeps a similar “Diary for Mom” (or Dad), it can become a wonderful tradition in your friendship.