Be a Good Mom

So often my clients have opinions about how another mom is being a better mom than they are. She's doing this or that. She's better at this. She never does that—Etc etc etc. 

I get it. 

But I hate it. 

For 3 reasons.  

1. The shame game does not support anyone's growth or wellness.  
2. We never know what happens in the other 23 hours and 50 minutes of the day that you don't interact with this mother.  
3. You are not the mother of her kids and she is not the mother of yours.  

Let's Talk about this for a minute. 

What does it take to be a good mom? Is a working mom a good mom? Is a stay-at-home mom a good mom? Is the one who slaves in the kitchen making fully organic meals, who doesn't have time for board games as good as the mom who makes a frozen pizza and wins tonight's round of Uno? Is it the mom who has a girls' night once a week to refill her cup or the mom who sacrifices every desire for her kids a good mom? 

They are all good moms. Every. Single. One. 

I can say this with confidence because every mom is doing the best she can with what she knows in that moment.  Just like you are doing the best you can in every moment of your day. 

Don’t ever judge your mundane moments against someone else’s highlight reel. There is so much more to parenting than that snippet of time that you are at the grocery store with your kiddo, or during that one phone call you had to make today when the kids were misbehaving. I know you know what I’m talking about. If you can ask for grace in saying, “I swear they’re not usually like this” then you can offer the same grace to yourself as you try to judge your daily life against someone else's. You know the good comes with the bad. You know there are picture-perfect moments in your life and there are moments that make you want to scream. Light and dark, yin and yang, good and not-so-good. No one is immune to this reality of life. 

Speaking of offering grace, I want you to stop allowing yourself to feel envious of someone else’s child. From the, “I wish my kid was good in math like her kid” to the “I wish we had a relationship like that” to the “I wish my child behaved that way” to the “I wish I had the patience that mother has” or “I wish I used that parenting strategy last night when I was in that situation.” No more of those thoughts. Why? Because that child is not YOUR child and you are not THEIR mother. See each kid is born to us for a reason. They choose this life and this moment in your life to become a part of your world. They need this version of you, as you are now. They need these exact moments with you to grow into the people they came to Earth to be. How cool is that?! 

So what does it take to be a good mom? A mom who loves her kids AND loves herself enough to honor her needs just as much as she does theirs. They don’t need you to be like anyone else. They need you to be most like yourself. Like the truest version of you. They need you to be Purely You.