When you are at work, you feel as if you ought to be with the children. When you are at home, you feel you really ought to work a bit more. Many parents have a bad conscience about things great and small; they don’t think they are good enough as pare ...
When you are at work, you feel as if you ought to be with the children. When you are at home, you feel you really ought to work a bit more. Many parents have a bad conscience about things great and small; they don’t think they are good enough as parents, and they are incredibly self-critical. We all want to be the best parents in the world, after all.
The question then is: What are the ‘best parents’ like?
Take it easy! – How to be an OK parent! is the book which reveals that you are in fact a much better parent if you aren’t so perfect, but rather settle for being OK. For example, if you simply accept that sometimes you can’t fetch your child from the nursery until half past five, you send out for pizza, you can get angry when your child refuses to get dressed, or you say to your child that you haven’t time to play because you must make dinner.
Texts which discuss the issues sensibly are interspersed with interviews with parents, and descriptions of everyday situations as well as difficult times. But the forgiving tone is as far from the usual ‘rules and musts’ as one can come.
Malin Alfvén, is a psychologist specializing in children and parents. She contributes regularly to magazines aimed at parents with young children, and to the general media. One of Sweden’s most popular family experts.
Kristina Hofsten, was for 25 years a reporter with the magazine Vi Föräldrar. Now she is a freelancer.