How could I be such a bad mother?

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When my children were little I had to go to the park every day, morning and afternoon, especially because I couldn't stand them at home.

Everyone get some air!

The park, that

full of screaming children and little birds that I can't even see.

Fortunately, that age has passed -now they take walks by themselves at night, and abundantly-, but I still go to the park with my dog.

The landscape has changed a lot in these more or less 15 years.

Before, the moms -the dads were at home watching football or taking a nap, except for my husband, who has always been

a true visionary seeing what I see now, the truth- we would run to find a seat on a bench and we just We moved if the child asked us to push him on the swing until he learned to do it on his own.

Meanwhile, we gossiped or made plans for dinner out the following Friday.

a change of scenery

in the park .

And they don't sit on the bench, no, because they are modern parents and play with their offspring all the time, non-stop.

All cut from the same pattern - skinny jeans, polo shirts and their brightly colored New Balance - they enter the sandbox and throw themselves on the ground to catch up with their owners and lords, that is, their children, they are covered in dust, They help them fill the bucket with sand over and over again, and above all they are patient, looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo full.

One day, while my dog ​​was sniffing every blade of grass, I saw that at that moment there were 12 dads for four moms.

"What a change!" I thought.

And I noticed two athletic young fathers sitting on the floor of the sandbox.

One of them had a son named Mateo -or champion, because

of filling the bucket, going down the slide and hitting the ball.

He was such a champion judging by the times his father told him that the boy, about 3 years old, must already have several Olympic medals: tremble, Nadal, it is not that Alcaraz arrives, that also, it is that he arrives Matthew-.

games for two

To which we were going: Mateo's father helped him make castles -which Mateo destroyed in a second, but he did it very well, like a champion- while he bottle-fed his other baby.

When he tried to strike up a conversation with the father next door -his offspring of his was called Bruno-, Mateo made them divert their attention towards him because he thought of a joke, and

and that was the end of the conversation between the adults.

When Mateo got tired of refilling the bucket, his dad said it was snack time.

And, quickly, he took out of his backpack -which looked like a magician's hat, there was everything there- a tupperware with perfectly cut and peeled apple segments.

Mateo pounced on them like I would pounce on a little pot of eels.

And his father told his friend in the park: “How strange that he is so hungry, if he has eaten a phenomenal dish that I make him that he loves:

cut vegetables, all crushed in the shape of a hamburger”.

I thought so, that Mateo was so crazy about the quinoa and vegetable burger that he ate the apple as if there were no tomorrow.

And then four nuts, which are very nutritious and superfoods.

Other times

At that time I remembered the chorizo ​​sandwiches from Pamplona that I took to my children and, if I didn't have bread, a Nocilla sandwich (oh, I had palm oil at that time).

When they finished, we would go to the

the corner and buy colored licorice, fried eggs and those sugar-coated candies that are so acid that they make you shiver.

For the little one, a pack of worms to see if while he ate them he stayed seated in the chair for a little while and calm down.

Well, Mateo, very well nourished and hydrated -now one no longer drinks, one hydrates- thanks to a natural juice prepared at home, he finally decides!

start playing with the other boy, Bruno.

Future plans

That something was the school that Mateo was going to attend the following year.

It is one that follows

and in which, according to Mateo's father, especially the children are very, very happy, they play a lot, they take chess and Chinese classes, but they learn without realizing it, without doing homework and, What is more important, without any demands or trauma.

What he didn't say, but I did think, is how Mateo would later pass the Selectividad exam -oh, sorry, now it's called the EBAU- if he hadn't studied by heart that the Ebro is the mightiest river in Spain, that the Catholic Monarchs called Isabel and Fernando and that Kant was a philosopher.

How could Mateo then do a triple degree in Business Administration, Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science at the university, and of course end up with a

Will my children be okay?

Anyway, my dog ​​had already done everything he had to do in the park and I was in a hurry to go home, because something was on my mind: had I been a good mother?

"My God, how have I been able to buy them candy and not base their nutrition only on superfoods?" She thought as he ran as fast as she could.

When I finally arrived -three minutes later, but so stressful that

I rushed to my children's rooms to see if they were okay, if they hadn't grown a third arm or had mutated into something weird, because in addition to the sweets once even ate hamburgers (meat, not vegetables) from the Burger King next door.

I asked them if they were okay and their answer reassured me.

The eldest said: "Mom, let me, I'm watching a series and then I'll meet."

And the little one: "What's for dinner?"

I corrected the menu on the spot and blurted out: "Cream of vegetables."

And he: «Pass.

"Let there be two, and so there is for everyone," I told him.

Yes, it's them and they're great, I thought.

Wow, what a relief.

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