Stacey Solomon has revealed she once left her baby in a supermarket. It happened a decade ago, shortly after the birth of her first son
“I’ve had some spectacular parenting fails in my time,” she said on ITV’s This Morning. “Not long after Zach was born, I was walking around a store, putting stuff in my basket. He was in the buggy and I’d placed the shop basket on top. About ten minutes later I was queuing at the till when I suddenly felt sure I had another basket or something. That ‘something’, of course, was Zach. I don’t think I’ve ever moved as fast as I did through that store.”
Forgetting your baby is obviously pretty high on the ‘Don’t Do This’ list, but any time someone opts to share their tales of not-that-great parenting, they should be applauded. Not for forgetting the kid, but for possibly making some other “imperfect” parents feel a bit better.
It’s a decade-old story that Solomon chose to tell. She didn’t have to tell it – and with the internet being what it is, she’s probably had some criticism sent her way since, by people who have “never made a mistake in their lives”.
The thing about parenting is, it’s hard. Really hard, and it’s easy to feel like you’re getting it all wrong. There seems to be some impossible-to-strike happy medium where your child has exactly the right amount of everything, but it feels like it’s only impossible for you, and everyone else manages it easily.
We’re surrounded by perfection. It’s everywhere. When we’re feeling completely rational, we know that it’s fake, cherry-picked, and expertly curated – and that everyone faces the same struggles as us. But if we’re stressed, anxious and beating ourselves up, that rationality goes out of the window, and it can seem like every mistake you make is stupider than the last. When that is applied to something as emotionally fraught as parenting, it can be pretty devastating.
Solid food, starting nursery, potty training – whatever stage you’re at, it’s easy to feel like you’re doing it wrong. If you go for it, you worry you’re rushing them, and they’re missing out on vital stages of development, and they’ll grow up weird. If you don’t push them, you worry you’re babying them too much and they’ll grow up weird. Either way, you suck!
It’s all too easy to take the moments when you feel like a crap parent and expand them to encompass your entire life. So there’s something really comforting about parents freely admitting to times they didn’t do the greatest of jobs – and cheerfully sharing their cock-ups.
There’s a solidarity there, a welcome reminder that nobody is perfect. It’s all pretty hard, and everyone’s just putting one foot in front of the other. We should talk about mistakes rather than beating ourselves up about them – that way we can learn from them, laugh about them, make other people feel better about their own. And try not to leave our kids in the supermarket again.