Take the Good and Leave the Bad

A few years ago I had a negative experience in which my great uncle took my son to get a haircut and found chewing gum in my son’s hair. Rather than telling me about it, he called my mother (and probably told other relatives about it), expressing his concern about my parenting abilities.

A few days later, while I was recovering from the worst food poisoning I had ever experienced, my mother calls me and begins a tirade about how she is concerned about me neglecting my children (making sure their hairs are properly combed and presentable).

One of the worst things you can tell parents (in my opinion) is that they neglect their children. This was a difficult thing for me to go through, especially when my uncle chose to tell everyone except for me about the chewing gum in the hair.

The moral I took from this experience is to take the good from your experiences and leave the bad. Choosing to learn from your experiences rather than letting negative experiences affect your self concept/mood is a very empowering skill to learn. It empowers you to let go of feelings that are not helpful to you (such as feeling that you are a bad parent).

I learned to pay more attention to keeping my children’s hair looking neater and cleaner and to avoid gum getting into their hair in the first place. I could have wallowed in the negative feelings of being exposed to multiple relatives as a neglectful mother. Honestly, I did feel upset at first, which is normal, but you must recognize your negative feelings and then find ways to “take the good, and leave the bad.”