The other day I received a complement from a friend who reads my blog. I don't want to embarrass her so I wont tell you that it was Shannon Lappin - oops! Shannon (well the cats out of the bag anyhow), said that reading my blog makes her feel normal. I understood that she meant that my life sounded like hers, not that her life sounded normal in comparison to mine.
I found this truly flattering. I guess this was so meaningful to me for two reasons. Number one - Shannon is one of the mom's I admire most and because I have a secret agenda in life (not just the blog). I think as mothers we spend to much time trying to live up to standards that are unachievable and unrealistic. I feel like we are fine until we have kids and then we expect ourselves to be perfect all the time.
Now I do understand that when it comes to raising children the stakes are high and that our children deserve the best parents possible. But do we really achieve this by being hard on ourselves or expecting perfection!
We all struggle with something. Some of us have children who always seem to be two steps ahead of us. (That is likely, as my mother likes to point out, because her grandchildren are much smarter than her kids were). Some of us gained huge amounts of weight after we had our babies. Some of us had a two year old who still had a bottle. Some of us have kids who watch way to much TV. Some mom's have a really hard time nursing their babies. Some of our kids are small or even worse talk late. All of these issues are things that can make us feel inadequate.
When you think of it though, most of these problems do not become serious issues. I don't think my parents were perfect and yet I seemed to turn out OK (alright enough of the backtalk). I think we need to all give ourselves a collective break. The important thing is that our kids learn values and that they learn to be people that give more to the world than they take.
If this blog has given me the chance to share my life with others and share my imperfections and struggles, and this is helpful to others, well - that is a good thing in my books.
So Hurray for Mom's everywhere - perfect or not!
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3 comments:
I agree. We need to stop competing, even in our heads and be about building each other up and helping each other. It's not an easy ride for any of us and the successes we see in each other should make us happy for them, not jealous.
It's refreshing to hear somebody say what you've said! I 100% agree with you -- let's stop trying to be super-moms and trying to create super-children. Let's just let them be who God created them to be.
Sheri
Well said, Roberta. About too much TV...How much is too much? Would you say watching 10 hours a day for the past 6 days is too much? I've been sick and that is my coping mechanism. I am a little afraid that Dawson's big tummy will just keep getting bigger as he sits there watching TV while I sleep off this awful bug! Ah well...I hope you are having a great week!
Hope
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