"Stop it!"

I'm not a parenting expert. I don't have diplomas and degrees in child psychology, I haven't given talks to huge cheering crowds and I don't think my children will be winning any 'perfect specimen of humanity' awards. Not this week anyway.

My only qualification is that I have somehow survived in a team of two frightened and ill equipped individuals, whose first child popped out to the exhausted faces of a husband and wife duo who hadn't slept for over twenty four hours. True, my husband's claim to fame with the birth of our twins less than two years later, is that I was spectacularly sick into his concerned face, as he peered over me with a damp flannel mopping my fevered brow like in the text books. It just goes to show that the books don't know everything and when the midwives insist on force feeding the distressed mother Vegetarian Ratatouille in the second stage of labour, 'stand well back' is the only command worth adhering to.

I work mainly with women and hear a lot of their family difficulties as we go about our business. To be fair, men have problems too, but they don't tend to bear them all to anyone within earshot with quite so much panache over a coffee and a gingernut biscuit, or four.

It occurred to me as I was listening to someone recently, a mother who was having difficulty with her teenage son, that we are probably our own worse enemies. Her problems were no different to anything that I have already weathered with my own four little delights (thankfully now almost into adulthood) but I had this moment of revelation, where I wished that I could send my forty-four year old self back in time, to have a little word with my twenty-three year old self. I wouldn't use words of comfort or encouragement, trite little sayings to get my younger self through the night, as my colicky first, second, third and fourth child screamed and drew their legs up in pain. I would whisper only two little words into her very tired, sleep deprived and nearing-her-wits-end ears.

"Stop it!"

Stop what? You might well ask.

Stop telling myself that I am useless, that I am rubbish, that I am the worst mother in the world, despite the fact that my baby is only one, two, three days old and can't speak and doesn't have the wherewithal to judge me yet. Stop bemoaning my skill, or lack thereof, comparing myself to Mrs Next-Door who's on her eleventh baby and they all sleep like angels from four hours old. Stop beating myself up for the things I can't manage and concentrate on the things I can. Stop pushing away well-meaning help from those who would love the opportunity to step in and bless me. Stop lying to them and to myself. Stop gazing in my mind's eye at the kind of mother I think I should be, lipstick wearing, coiffed hair blowing gracefully in the breeze with my peachy pink babe nestled comfortably to my designer top for the photo shoot. Stop taking everything personally, from the inevitable sticky eye to the equally likely bout of green diarrhoea which can pebble dash the whole of the upstairs in the blink of an eye.

There are long term consequences for such thoughts. They become a mantra for our parenting, telling us that we are worthless, not just for those first hard few months but forever. Infused with guilt they cross the boundaries of time into the terrible twos, reminding us that we are rubbish, useless, never get anything right and they are with us in the stressful teens, only now we negate our feelings of inadequacy through other means. Because we are awful parents, the guilt persuades us that we have to compensate our children, hand over whatever they want despite it being what they don't need and shouldn't have. It encourages us to believe that nothing we try is ever going to work because we are failures. We couldn't stop the crying colicky baby and we cannot stop the prison bound, pregnancy headed, desperate for boundaries teenager.

It gets worse. If we are useless parents, then we will be useless at everything else. No point going back to college, applying for that promotion, even thinking of emigrating, because we couldn't stop the screaming baby so that makes us rubbish to the core. And what of our little darlings? Well, they can mind read can't they? They hear our inner condemnations and decide that we really are crap, not worth listening to, respecting or even asking for help. If we don't rate ourselves, then why should they?

Emotional parenting is as old as the hills. It's really not a new thing. We are designed to love, protect and cherish our young. That involves walking the floor and agonising, not patting them on the back and leaving them to get on with it. We are meant to give of ourselves and that is truly ok. But we don't have to empty ourselves out onto the carpet and then stamp on our shattered, irrational souls. Nor do we have to repeat the exercise over and over for the rest of our natural lives.

If I could go back in time and give myself a break, those would be the words I would say to my tearful, desperate self, stopping the flood of self-degradation and changing my parenting from the very start.

"Stop it!"

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