Feeling Guilty

I feel guilty. Incredibly guilty. It’s been eating at me all afternoon. I was supposed to go to a parent class today for my four year old’s music lessons. I chose not to go, because I was feeling overwhelmed with everything that I needed to get done before work tomorrow. So this morning around 11:30am I sent a text message to the teacher letting her know I was unable to make it and apologized. When I cancelled I had a pile of Narrative Drafts to grade, 84 to be exact. And I was in the middle of doing laundry, plus I still had to plan a menu for the week, grocery shop and clean the house. 

I’m not even sure what this parent class was to consist of. Maybe that’s why it’s eating at me so much? Both of my boys go to music lessons, my oldest has been attending this music school for over two and a half years. And since this is my second kid going through the same school and curriculum, I feel fairly confident about what is expected of me as the parent and my role in helping them to be the best they can be. Still I feel like I’ve failed my kid by not going. 

I never went to the parent class for my oldest. Somehow I missed it. Maybe because we switched teachers part way through because we were having problems making it to class on time due to traffic. Or maybe because a parent class was never scheduled. Regardless I’ve never been to a parent class before and I don’t know what I missed.

As a class, all of the parents agreed that 4:00pm today would be a great time for us to meet without the children. Three weeks ago when it was scheduled, it worked for me. I’ll admit I wasn’t exactly thrilled about it, since it was on a Sunday and meant one more day for me to commute to the school. Did I mention we live 50 minutes away from the school? Well we do. It’s not too bad of a commute once a week and the kids lessons overlap so we’re done in about an hour and half. Then after the lessons we usually use that time to do our Costco or Target shopping, taking advantage of the fact that we’re in the city.

The thought of doing that commute again today was something I had no desire to do. I did not want to spend a good three hours of my day going to this class today. I honestly felt like I didn’t have three hours to spare. So why do I feel so guilty? Still?