Are you a good parent? Am I?

Sometimes bad parenting is easy to spot. For instance, 7 News here in Denver recently ran a story about a father who left his 4-year-old asleep in a car in below-freezing temperatures for hours...while he went inside a nearby house and "visited" with a 13-year-old girl. (You can read the story here.)

I think it's safe to say that we can all agree that, my friend, is very poor parenting. In fact, it's pretty much paramount to abuse.

But what about the rest of us in our everyday lives? I often wonder where I stand on the spectrum of parenting. I'm pretty sure I'm a good mother...but don't we all think that? Isn't that, in fact, part of the reason we can get up in the morning after being up all night with the baby, feed the 4-year-old-breakfast, deal with the fact that everyone's tired and cranky...and still manage to get everyone fed and dressed and ready and maybe even sing along to "Old McDonald Had a Farm" in the car on the way to school for the fifty-millionth time?
But does that make us a good parent? Or just a parent?

It's hard to say. Perhaps even impossible. I tend to hold myself up against a slew of mothers that I imagine are out there, "good" mothers who don't snap at their kids no matter how tired they are, who manage somehow to keep the house clean on a constant basis, who can spend their days raising their children while they act as the family chauffeur, cheerleader, housekeeper, cook, oh, and even income-maker of the family...and still have energy and time at the end of the day for their husband.

And I try, I really do, to keep up with all those imaginary mothers. But I admit that there are days that I do snap at my kids, that my house does get dirty (and sometimes stays that way for awhile), and that I quite frankly get really worn out trying to do everything and be everything to everyone. But I still believe that I'm doing my best and that my kids are happy, healthy, curious, polite, funny, and sweet (who, me, biased?), so I must be doing at least okay in terms of the parenting standard.

However, I decided to turn to the experts to see what actually makes a good parent. To read more about what I found, check out my new webpage at: http://www.examiner.com/x-2370-Denver-Early-Childhood-Parenting-Examiner~y2009m1d15-Are-you-a-good-parent