Five Things That Have Made Me A Better Mother

You have heard it all before. Motherhood is hard. Motherhood is unpredictable. You may not ever really feel like you know what you’re doing. While all of these things are true there is a lot of joy, wisdom, and knowledge that come along with being a mother.

I have to admit however that I haven’t always found the joy, wisdom or knowledge I was hoping to have.  There have been many days that have been filled with frustration and doubt. There have been days that I have wanted bedtime to arrive sooner rather than later. There have been days that I have cried on the phone to my husband while he is at work. There have been days I yelled more than I would have liked. Those have not been my proudest moments as a mother.  I finally figured out that there were some things I needed to change.

Redefining the idea of the perfect day.

I needed to realize that the days are never going to be “magazine or Pinterest perfect”. The kids are not always going to have on clothes that match or are stain free for that matter. We are not going to be able to do the perfect craft once a week to hang on our fridge for all our relatives to see. We are not always going to eat perfectly prepared organic meals and that is okay. Sometimes the perfect day is going to be spent inside in our pajamas. We are going to eat pretzels and cookies and watch way too much television. We are going to throw caution to the wind and feel a sense of freedom.

Ignoring the noise.

I spent way too much time telling my kids to quiet down. “Stop screaming.” “Why are you guys so loud today? “ I got sick of hearing my own voice telling them to quiet down. I finally realized kids are loud. Everything they do is loud. Moving from the kitchen to the living room? Loud. Talking to each other while right next to one another? Loud. Talking to each other while in separate bathrooms? Ridiculously loud.  I finally embraced the volume level around here. 

Allowing them to feel proud even if it’s not perfect.

At the end of every day we tell our kids to clean up all the toys they were playing with before bed. Often times that means they have to clean up the equivalent of a small toy store that only sells super small pieces. I have specific bins for all the toys. For some reason I expected a six year old and a three year old to always put things away in the correct bins. I found myself saying “Okay good enough” and then reorganizing everything after they were in bed. Why? Why on earth did I feel the need to do that? I realized one day that they were trying really hard. I realized that they were in fact putting away all the toys and they were proud that the floor was no longer a mine field of Legos. Instead of “good enough” I started saying “great job boys” and they started trying even harder. Lesson learned.

Allowing them to make mistakes.

It’s so hard sometimes to not intervene in every little thing my kids are doing. When our six year old was learning to ride a two wheeler for the first time I was constantly saying “Oh watch out!” “Try leaning more to your left. YOUR OTHER LEFT!” He got off his bike one day and said he was giving up. After giving him the whole when you don’t succeed at something right away that doesn’t mean you give it up speech I realized I needed to back off a little. I didn’t bring up the bike for two weeks. Then one day we were all outside and he went into the garage on his own and got out his bike. I stood on the other side of our yard biting my tongue and allowed him to lean the wrong way and ride directly into our shed one too many times. After about twenty minutes he got the hang of it and the smile on his face was worth the bite marks on my tongue.

Slowing down.

Our days are so busy. Between rushing around from one place to the next I often find myself saying “I can’t wait for this day to be over.” One day my six year old chimed in with a “Me either!” Wait just one second. A six year old should never want the day to be over before it’s even begun. I realized my stress was rubbing off on them. My constant worry about rushing off to the next place or checking off the next thing on the list of things to get done was stressing out my kids. I decided to make a constant effort to try not to feel so rushed. The email sitting in my inbox can wait. I don’t have to make it to every single PTA meeting. Target will still be open tomorrow.  I decided to slow down. I decided the extra hour of us running around outside was going to trump the homemade lasagna I was going to make. I decided grilled cheese and apple slices were going to have to do. I decided to be here instead of at the next place and I’m so happy I did.

Don’t get me wrong our days can still be chaotic and full of stress. I don’t always know what the day is going to bring, but one thing I do know is that doing these things has made me a better mother. 

If You Give A Toddler...Anything

If you give a toddler a crayon know that at some point she may draw you a beautiful picture…on the freshly painted wall.  Then she might drop said crayon into the heater so that come winter you wind up with a rainbow made of wax on your floor.

If you give a toddler a marker accept the fact that he will probably draw a mustache on the dog.

If you give a toddler Play-Doh you will find dried Play-Doh for months in places like your bed after that one big lapse in judgment.

If you give a toddler a cup of juice and tell him to be careful not to spill you have most certainly guaranteed that he will in fact spill it…everywhere.

If you give a toddler yogurt on a Monday and she loves every bit of it she will hate it when you try to give it to her on Friday. 

If you give a toddler his own clothes to put on after breakfast you will still have a naked toddler at dinner.

If you give a toddler a time line you will most certainly be even later than you planned.

If you give a toddler free reign of the house you will most likely wind up with toilet paper all the way down your hallway leading to him in your bathroom having a party.

 

If you give a toddler a hug you will get a hug in return that makes you forget about all the other stuff until you try to bake cookies “with” your toddler the very next day.

Less Than Perfect Is The New Perfect

Before I had children I had such visions of the type of mother I would be one day. I had it all drawn up in my head and tied up so neatly with a pretty little ribbon.  I would be THIS kind of mother but not THAT kind of mother. I would do THIS with my children but I would never do THAT with my children. I would be perfect and my children would be perfect too.

You can stop laughing now. I finally did. You see it’s easy to say you will be a certain type of mother before you actually are one. It’s easy to have all the ideas in the world about how your days will unfold, how your children will be neatly dressed like a page out of the latest J. Crew catalog, how your house will resemble the cover of Pottery Barn, how you and your family will enjoy calm breakfasts while the perfect looking dog lies quietly on the floor. Then you actually have children and you realize that is never going to happen.  You're just happy if your kids clothes don't have stains, and your coffee is lukewarm.

You see the problem with creating such a detailed image before you face the reality is that the letdown can feel huge. By letdown I do not mean my children, I mean me. I had created an idea in my head of me being a perfect mother.  I would be a mother who never loses her cool, is always showered, dressed and sporting a little bit of makeup, a mother who spends every moment of her day enriching the lives of her children.  In my fantasy the laundry was always done and put away, the house was always clean, and the food shopping was always done way before anyone had time to notice the milk had become questionable.  My children always ate perfectly prepared balanced meals. We spent time throughout the day reading, building, playing, baking and dancing.  I know my fantasy was quite elaborate.

Quite a few years into this whole motherhood thing I found myself going to bed disappointed in my performance more often than I care to admit. I started feeling constant pressure about why the house was a disaster more often than not, why I allowed my children to watch more TV that particular day than I swore I would, why I burned the dinner, why I was still pulling clean clothes out of the laundry basket instead of putting it all away and why this was nothing like I had pictured. Where was my Pottery Barn house? Where were my J.Crew kids? Where oh where was my perfect dog? Why wasn't I showered?! Then it hit me. All of those images were in my head. They weren’t part of my reality and if we’re being honest I don’t think they are part of many people’s reality.



Want a perfect picture? This is the reality.

Unfortunately what is part of our reality is putting way too much pressure on ourselves as mothers to be perfect, when the truth is our children are better off that we are not.  We are always teaching our children that they don’t have to be perfect they just have to try to do their best. We teach our boys to put forth their best effort and we will always be proud of them. Perfection is just not attainable, not for them and certainly not for us. I sat down the other day after the boys had gone to bed and I had that overwhelming feeling of disappointment in me come through again. It had been one of those days when you aren’t even really sure what you accomplished. The laundry sat unfolded, the vacuum never got turned on and the craft project I had promised the boys we would do never got touched. I had yelled at both of them for fighting with each other amongst other things. I felt like a giant failure. Motherhood may be one of the only jobs that you aren’t supposed to admit you failed at that particular day. Everyone has a bad day at work every now and again but motherhood comes with so much more pressure. After all doesn’t every little thing we do in a day affect our children?  It turns out it doesn’t.  That’s right you heard it here first. Our children are not in fact affected by every little thing we do. Our children have the amazing ability to look at the big picture and see it for what it is. It’s not perfect but it’s life. It’s not always pretty and it certainly doesn’t come wrapped up in a beautiful ribbon but when you take the time to breathe you realize you are doing all right. They are doing all right. When you take the pressure off of yourself to be perfect the light shines through and makes it all clear again.

That night after I stopped beating myself up for our less than perfect day I went in and checked on each of the boys. I kissed the two year old and tucked him back in as he slept ever so soundly. I then went in to my five year old, kissed him on the forehead and whispered I love you buddy. He rolled over and said Mommy I love you more.  As I closed his door I took a deep breath and made myself a promise that the next morning I would live in the moment, that I wouldn’t stress about the whole check list, that I would be with my boys in the present and that is something to wrap a ribbon around.