4blessings

What's that saying? I did the best I knew how to do. When I knew better, I did better. Something like that.

I think we all have parenting regrets, even those women (and I'm not one of them!) who were informed and appeared to get it all right from the beginning. It's easy to say and hard to do, but you have to forgive yourself and stop living in the past. You can't change what you did yesterday, but you can change what you will do today. So you say you didn't value and cherish the time when your children were little. Stop feeling guilty about that and put that energy into cherishing the time you have with them now.

You can encourage them by talking about your experience and what you wish you had done differently. For example, I really regret not being more informed on the circumcision issue. I never gave it a second thought until after my last boy was circed. Now that I know better, I would never make that choice again, but I think they discard the foreskin so there's no going back now. :P It's useless for me to beat myself up about it. What I do instead is tell everyone I know who is having a child to inform herself on circs. Maybe someone else will learn from my mistake.

I'm sorry you're feeling down about this. I pray that you find some peace