Birthday gifts and Christmas lists.. why do I feel so much guilt?

There is a kind of parenting guilt that I don't think we talk about enough, and that's the guilt that comes from growing up with very little yourself.
When you've grown up in poverty; birthdays and Christmas can carry a lot more emotion than just presents and parties.
Yes, I had birthday parties, I got presents and of course my mum did what she could.
But when you're a kid, you don't always understand the what's going on around you.
You just notice what everyone else has; like the kids whose Christmases seem bigger, the kids who got piles of presents and the kids who get the things they actually asked for..
Plus there's the birthday parties that seem bigger and better than you could ever dream of!
And even if nobody ever says it out loud, sometimes you can't help but feel like everyone else has it better than you.
I think, no i KNOW that's something that stayed with me.
Because now, as a mum, when my kids have a birthday coming up, I don't just see a birthday list.. I see and feel my inner child, screaming to fulfil the dreams i had about what my birthday would look like.. and when my kids ask for something that's expensive, part of me doesn't just think, "can we afford this?"  I'm thinking..."I never want them to feel like I felt." I never want them to look around and think everyone else gets more.
I absolutely never want them to feel like their birthday wasn't special and i never want them to wonder why they couldn't have what everyone else seemed to have.
And that's where the guilt tsunami comes in.
Because realistically, I know that my children don't need hundreds of dollars worth of presents to know they're loved, and I know that birthdays aren't measured by the amount of money we spend. But emotionally? Sometimes that's really fucking hard to remember.
Because when you've experienced having very little, it's easy to do the complete opposite when you become a parent. You want to give them everything. You want to make up for what you didn't have, because what you remember is your mum scraping Christmas together with the hampers delivered by the Smith family 2 days ago, and on birthdays waking up not knowing if anyone even remembers its your birthday..

You want their birthdays to feel magical.
You want them to open their presents and never have that little feeling of "why don't i get what they get?"
But the reality is, I can't give my kids everything,
and a lesson I'm trying to teach them(while I also learn myself) is that having less doesn't mean you're less, and you should never want things just because other people have them... That someone else's pile of presents doesn't make their Christmas better than yours.
That a birthday doesn't have to cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to make you feel special.
And maybe the hardest part is learning that I don't have to prove to my children that they're special or loved by spending money.
I can show them they're special in other ways.
I can get their favourite dinner.
I can let them choose their perfect cake.
I can decorate the house.
I can tell them how proud I am of them.
I can make traditions that belong to our family.
I can give them memories.
And I can give them a mum who is present.
Because I think that's the part I forget when the guilt starts creeping in.
My kids aren't going to measure my love by the price tag... I'm the one doing that... I'm the one carrying experiences from my childhood when I'm adding things to my cart.
I'm the one looking at their wish list and thinking about everything I couldn't have.
And maybe part of parenting is learning to separate what our children actually need from what our inner child desperately wants to give them.
I will always want to give my kids the world, but I also want to teach them that they already have something more important than all the stuff in the world... A family who loves them, a home where they're celebrated and a childhood where they know, without a doubt, that they are special.

Even when the budget says no.. especially when the budget says no.
Because maybe being a good mum isn't about making sure our kids never experience having less.
Maybe it's about making sure they never feel like having less means they are worth less.

Stace x