Do you ever have those moments you feel like you are dropping all the balls as a mom? The times you feel like no matter how hard you try you are still lacking in a major way in motherhood?
Me too.
It’s usually in those moments I share all my concerns and frustrations with my husband and he nods and says he understands because he knows I simply need to hash these things out loud. Sometimes simply talking about something can be the best thing for us. But then there are the rare moments that he throws in a gem out to me. Something I need to hear. Often these things are a simple sentence, small in a way but big in another.
In one of these recent conversations he says: “You are too nice.”
This weird paradox rose up in me as he stated that simple thought. One part of me said but I feel so mean. The other part knew he was exactly right. An understanding dawned on me, often I am too nice on the front end but then too mean on the backend. I needed to flip the two, let me explain.
You see I want my kids to be happy. I want to be a positive” yes mom”. So I give and I give and I say yes when I know I shouldn’t. I mean why can’t they get muddy again today? I should say yes to that. I mean why can’t we stay at the park ten minutes longer, I have no other plans (other than the housework and chores). Instead of saying no (because that feels mean) I say why not (because that feels nice). When I say yes I feel like I am giving them this freedom. Yet the yeses come with an emotional commitment I don’t usually want to acknowledge. They pile up on my chest and begin to squeeze the air right out of my body. As they pile up with no boundaries, I turn grumpy when it all gets too overwhelming. I get annoyed, impatient, angry.
As much as I want to be both, nice and nice, I think as moms we get to be nice and mean. How we do it matters though.
I am learning, instead of saying yes to everything then becoming monster mom, I began to weigh my yeses very carefully before I commit. That means sometimes I come across as mean on the front end, but I save my sanity on the back end. It looks like wisely putting limitations on what we do with the goal that my character stays intact.
For example–no we can’t stay at the park 10 minutes longer, but when we get home you can take turns pushing each other on the swing while I put away the dishes. Instead of dwelling on the freedom that is lost, I am trying to point them to a different kind of freedom. Sometimes I get so blind to all the freedom around me when I am uber focused on not getting what I want. Why would my kids be any different?
Pause here. I know some of you are thinking yeah but when we get home they wont swing, they will fight.
I feel you. My kids do the same. So in the name of being mean first and nice second I am learning to instead of lose it and spew words all over the place in anger I simply give them another option. Fine go play kindly doing what you want here at home. If you fight though, I will simply put you in seperate rooms to play for awhile. And if you cause problems there I will pull out a blanket and you will have to sit on a blanket with some books. And if that doesn’t work, time-out stool. Then I calmly followed through…kindly…most of the time :). I explain to my kids, you listen, your freedom grows, you don’t your freedom shrinks. It really is your choice, your responsibility.
How much freedom they handle? The choice is now theirs.
After a few times of realizing I was serious about this, they began to actually take me serious and enjoy the freedom instead of whine and complain and fight. This is also a journey. A journey of ups and downs. Sometimes I do great at this, other times I utterly fail. But I have heard it said before, I want to be seen as someone moving in a steady direction. Failure doesn’t mean I have fallen off the path, it simply may mean I have paused a while but will continue to move in the right direction when my feet become steady.
Does this process take work? Yes. Patience? You betcha. Is there mom guilt? For sure. Does it play out perfectly ever time? Absolutly not. But for me, it is a process that in the present time is making my imperfect self and my imperfect kids a tad bit better.
