At the end of each semester the girls receive their school reports. When we are given them, my first response is to flick past the first few pages and head straight to the back.

The first pages are the academic grades and comments by their teachers. The back page is all about the student. It’s reflective of their behaviour, their attitude and the effort that they apply to school. (It also notes how many days they were late to school – lets not go there.)

I expect these columns to be excellent. Don’t get me wrong; I hope that their grades in all the different subject areas are good as well, but knowing that my child is putting in the effort, that they have a good attitude. This is what is important to me.

I was thinking about how this applies in my role as a parent. At times I wonder if my report would say ‘shows potential, lacks motivation.’

Fortunately I don’t get ‘graded’, or given a report but I guess we now get unwillingly judged.

People feel the need to make comments on our ability to parent whether it is constructive or not.

At the end of the day while it may be helpful to receive feedback about the way that we parent, I am not sure in the grand scheme of things that it will make me a better mum.

If I was graded on my ability to let my child self settle I would receive a big fat fail. I have fed each and every one of my children to sleep. If feeding didn’t work I would rock them to sleep. This apparently is a big fat no no depending who you speak to, but I did it.

There is no one book or any given advice that I have applied to all my four children. Not because I was intentionally disregarding the advice I was given, but because it wasn’t what worked for my family.

We might not get it right all the time, in fact some days we might get it flat wrong.    We don’t always get the results that we want.

I want my parenting to be reflective of the fact that even on those days, I put the effort in. Not that I followed everyone’ advice, because that wont make me the perfect mum – whatever that is!

Raising four girls who are respectful, happy human beings, this is what is important to me. I want them to look back and know that even when I didn’t quite get it right, that I always tried.