Did you know you are a good mom? Yes You! I know you can easily come up with a million reason why you aren’t. But I am here to tell you that there are also a million reason why you are a good mom.
As mothers, so many of us are constantly questioning our mothering skills. We are comparing ourselves to other people and comparing ourselves to the images we see on social media and in the media. We don’t fully celebrate all that we do for our children. And it is just disheartening because so many moms are good moms and just are not owning it.
It is completely valid to question if you are doing the right things as a mom…If you are being too tough or too lenient? Are you present enough or too much of a helicopter mom? Are your kids active or over scheduled? Should you be spending more time with them? Are you doing this mom thing right?
But with the ability to see everyone’s picture perfect moments on social media, we have started to compare ourselves to the edited milliseconds of people’s lives we scroll through on our screens.
You beat yourself up because you aren’t throwing Pinterest worthy birthday parties for each kid. You don’t feel like you measure up to the homeschooling, homecooking guru you follow on Instagram. And you feel guilty because you don’t have time to follow through on the 8 Things Every Mom Should Do To Ensure Her Child Is A Genius.
There’s always something to compare ourselves to and at some point we need to take a look at the things that we do and not the things we don’t do. So here are 4 reasons why you are a good mom.
You love your kids.
Your kids don’t need some fabulous, Pinterest worthy life to feel loved. Kids don’t need their laundry perfectly folded. They don’t want to live in a spotless, clean house. And they definitely don’t want you hanging over them every minute of the day with 50 activities to educationally entertain them. They want to know you love them.
So start with the fact that you love your kids. The majority of the choices you make for your kids are based on your love for them. You want to do what is best for them.
If you can start with that every day, you have won half the battle. That doesn’t mean you will get everything right when it comes to parenting. It means even when you are wrong, you can rest on the fact that you tried to do what you thought was best for them at the time.
You are not perfect.
No one is perfect and accepting that makes you a good mom. Perfection is just not a realistic expectation. You are human and you are going to make mistakes everyday…big and small.
Your kids don’t need a perfect version of you. They need the flawed, imperfect version of you that shows up every day. That’s the person that will teach them the important lessons in life. That is the person that will accept all their imperfections and love them anyway. The flawed, real life version of you is the person your family loves and needs.
There will never be perfection and if you are waiting for perfection to think that you are a good mom, you are never going to feel like a good mom.
You know your children better than anyone else.
You can read all the parenting books in the world, you can listen to podcasts, you can read every parenting blog and article. At the end of the day, you know your children best and you are the one that can make the best decisions for them.
You are the expert. You get to decide how you raise your children and you get to feel confident about those choices.
In this digital age of information overwhelm, we are overexposed to too much information. There are parenting experts for every aspect of parenting, apps with daily parenting tips, podcasts for every parenting philosophy, mommy groups on facebook, blogs and fear based news stories on the local news…It’s too much! And constantly being bombarded with all this information is not helpful.
Sometimes people looking from the outside in may not understand the choices that you are making, but they don’t have the full story. Whoever is judging you, that’s on them. That’s their stuff.
Every child is different, every parent is different, every home dynamic is different and you are the expert when it comes to the children in your home. Even your children born with the same DNA, living in the same house are completely different.
So, if you can’t parent your own children the same, what makes you think you should parent like your neighbor or the mom that lives across the country that you follow on Instagram?
You keep at it.
Parenting is one of the hardest things you can ever do. The fact is there are going to be good days and bad days. Some days will feel impossible to get through and other days will be the best days of your life.
Sometimes the bad will far outweigh the good and it may sometimes seem that things will never turn around. There will be days and maybe even long periods of time where you feel like you are doing everything wrong. But you don’t give up, you keep at it.
Through all the things that life can bring your way…marriage, divorce, jobs, career changes, depression, learning challenges, changing family dynamics… you keep at it to the best of your ability. You wakeup every day and you give it another try.
Some days it will be the bare minimum because that’s all you have and other days you will give it everything you got. And because you keep at it, that makes you a good mom.
Stop fixating on what you are doing wrong and give yourself a pat on the back for all the things you are doing right. The last thing you have time for is picking yourself apart because you think your aren’t living up to some madeup, unrealistic standard. No mom is meeting that standard. And the sooner you give yourself credit for being a good mom, the sooner you will be a happier mom.
This blog post was based on The Mom Forum Podcast Episode 05: Owing You Version Of Motherhood With Angel Laketa Moore and the followup Episode 06: You Are A Boss Mom. You can also listen to The Mom Forum Podcast on Apple Podcast, Deezer, Google Podcast, Spotify and Stitcher.
Elisha Beach is a stay-at-home mom to four kids and four step-kids…Yes, you read that right—eight kids. She is a wife, home cook, taxi driver, herder of children, terrible housekeeper, selfcare advocate and founder of The Mom Forum.
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