Mary Angel

(6/2021) We all love those wonderful days when you feel like a super mom, the days when you parent perfectly and the kids behave like the ones in the commercials. Maybe it is even a whole week when you make all of the right decisions and you are finally the parent you always dreamed of being. You are Mrs. Cleaver, Mrs. Huxtable, and Mrs. Cunningham all rolled into one. Wait a minute, those days either never happen or are so few and far between that you can’t remember them. The bottom line is that none of us are that perfect parent we would like to be, and where would the fun in that be?

I am here to tell you that as moms we do the very best we can every day. Some days, our best is an A and sometimes it is a C at best. Don’t get me started on when we are sick in bed. That is a day when you feel like an F as a mom, if you are awake long enough to think about a grade. We strive for the A plus, but life gets in the way. There are not enough hours in the day, the car breaks down, it is your time of the month, it is the time of the month for every female in the house! There are so many speed bumps every day to you succeeding as mom of the year. That is why you have to just do your very best and try and do what you think is best for the kids.

On those days when you feel like you are failing let me be the first to say, you are doing great. Keep up the good work. Hang in there. Put one foot in front of the other. Keep on swimming. You got this. Never stop trying. Tomorrow is a new day. All I am trying to say is that you are doing great. As long as you love those wonderful gifts you have been given, there is always another day. Another sunrise is all you need to try again. When the morning comes, hug them more, kiss them more, and tell them that you love them, more!

Also, remember that you do an awful lot to get that A; some things I would bet you forget about or even overlook. You must be forgetting that you are a laundrywoman, chef, chauffer, tutor, beautician, therapist, cheerleader, bank, supervisor, secretary, personal assistant, walking calendar, doctor, nurse, nightmare warrior, and so much more. When you have a bad parenting day, try to have a list running in your head of all of the things you do well, so you can recall it at will to boost you up.

Along those same lines, try keeping a little card in your wallet that has a similar list or a saying or Bible verse that builds you up when you are feeling like a D minus. Maybe you start keeping some pictures or a little scrapbook with pictures of your mom successes. Find whatever works for you to remind yourself of how special you are. We all have those days, weeks, and months when we need help remembering that we are more than we think we are or feel we are in the moment.

I mentioned mom successes and some of you think maybe you don’t have those. I am here to convince you otherwise and define what I mean. A picture of a mom success might simply be a picture of the kids in dress clothes all together in the same shot. It could also be the kids in some activity together…and getting along. Maybe it is a picture after a family fun day and just the sight of it brings a wave of happy memories. The exact picture is not what matters, it is the feeling it brings to you when you see it.

If you truly feel you are in a rut of C minus days then maybe your focus should be on how you can bump your game up to a C plus. Life isn’t always a Hallmark movie; life doesn’t usually go from a C minus to an A plus overnight. It would be more accurate to hope to go from a 71% to a 71.5%. Although that isn’t the aha moment people want, it is still an improvement. It is like that old saying, "How do you eat an elephant?" and the answer is, "One bite at a time".

For me I have struggled with days where I get caught up in games on my phone, or television and then I feel like the horrible mom who missed out on quality time with the kids. That doesn’t mean that the next day I am going to drop everything and the kids and I are going to bond over an amazing in depth look at Shakespeare, before we go for a gourmet picnic at historic Gettysburg and learn about the history behind Little Round Top. It means that the next day I need to try and stay off electronics for a good portion of the day and focus some of that time on my kids.

As moms we sometimes get so bogged down when we fall short that we forget to take a step in the right direction, and before we know it we are buried under our own perceptions of our shortcomings. Instead of focusing on your mistakes and perceived inadequacies let’s all try to focus on our kids and enjoying them and raising them to be the best them they can be. Let’s all try to build up our mom friends and remind them that they are not alone and that we all screw up some times. Lord knows I screw up on a regular basis, but I keep trying and I talk to my kids about it. It is good for our kids to know we are human and make mistakes, just like they do. You are an amazing mom…don’t forget that!

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