How To Be A Good Mom – Simple Strategies That Work
Want to know how to be a good mom? Here’s how to enjoy motherhood by understanding a simple parenting truth.
Let’s chat about how to be a good mom.
If you want to know how to be a good mom and enjoy motherhood more – every single second of it, you have come to the right place!
PEOPLE OFTEN SAY THE DAYS ARE LONG BUT THE YEARS ARE SHORT
When your kids are still young, you probably think that people are crazy when they mention this quote.
The truth is back in the early days just getting through one day on little sleep, with overtired kids and no breaks seems like the biggest effort.
You feel like you deserve a gold medal when you get all your kids asleep in bed at the same time.
Sometimes you feel like all your efforts are in vain…
When your kids misbehave.
When they don’t eat what you cook.
When they come up with a new phobia or whine and complain or create an entirely different hurdle you need to jump over like an Olympic medallist.
HOW TO BE A GOOD MOM
You try your best but most days you trip and fall flat on your face.
As much as having a sleep while you are down sounds like a fantastic idea, you get up again anyway.
Because that’s what good moms do – you get up and keep moving forward, even when your eyelids can barely stay open, even when your patience is being pushed and prodded like play-dough.
FYI: When I say “good mom“, we all have a picture of what a great mom would look like to us. There’s no right or wrong here. Loving, kind, attentive, laidback – you get to choose what this phrase means to you
HOW TO BE A GOOD MOM
When our kids are young, in those early days, a good day may be when you find five minutes to have a shower or go to the toilet alone.
Or better yet, when your baby decides to have a night off from performing in her starring role during the witching hour (note: to a new mom, a crying baby honestly feels like a form of torture.)
But it isn’t always terrible in the middle of that cyclone.
They say that at the centre of the cyclone there is always a sense of calm.
And somehow you find that calm when you give yourself a chance to breathe.
You take a deep breath and suddenly time has sped forward.
The kids are now starting school.
The days and weeks begin to zip past.
They learn to read.
They go on playdates where you don’t need to stay.
They outgrow clothes that were big only a few months before.
HOW TO BE A GOOD MOM
Before you know it, you see a mom walking down the street with a baby in her pram and you can’t even remember what it was like to be in those shoes.
You think: Was that really me once upon a time?
It hits you like a punch in the gut.
You honestly can’t remember.
You can’t remember what it was like to have a baby who couldn’t talk back to you or a child who didn’t complain.
The years begin as a slow, quiet, sometimes snail-like stroll but as time goes on, they pick up a faster pace.
By the time your kids are in middle school it feels as if your life is in full sprint.
It’s too late to press pause or rewind – there’s no turning back.
And then high school arrives and you feel the first hit of true panic.
It sinks in then – right down into the core of your bones – this is the final stretch.
At some point in the future your kids will spread their wings and leave the nest.
Of course, you always knew it would one day happen but you actually couldn’t SEE the horizon before.
Now it’s stretched before you.
Wide and open.
No fences to keep your kids safe at night.
No more little beds to tuck them into in sight.
HOW TO BE A GOOD MOM
But that’s our job is right?
To prepare our kids for the world, to give them wings.
Except we never truly feel ready for this flight…
We aren’t ready now and we realize we never, ever will be.
How did time move so fast?
That invisible umbilical cord – you want to keep a tight grip on it.
You wish you could hide the scissors so it doesn’t ever get cut.
But your kids pull and pull at it until one day it snaps, just like that.
You can’t believe that your baby who is now taller than you used to be a little human you could cradle comfortably in your arms.
Those early days now feel like a long ago distant dream.
I’m standing in the middle of that road right now, with two teens in my home.
Why is it that the future seems so close but the past seems super far away?
I now think whoever wrote that initial quote I mentioned was actually lying when they said the days are long but the years are short.
HOW TO BE A GOOD MOM
The days are going now fast too.
When I try to hold onto each day it slips past me like sand through my fingertips.
The sand I used to kick away now seems as precious as gold.
I try to catch and collect whatever bits I can.
I would bottle it up if I could.
Can’t imagine this happening to you?
I know, I know…I remember thinking the journey would be so much slower.
But it’s not.
Blink and in a few year’s time you will be standing in my shoes too.
But what do you do until then?
How does a mom learn to enjoy every moment as her kids grow?
First know that you don’t have to love every moment but I encourage you to be present.
Be aware.
Be grateful.
Realize in a blink of an eye these days will be long and there will be nothing you can do to get them back.
Realize that time is fleeting and life is fragile.
It really is.
I’m not kidding.
Every day our kids grow older and we too grow older.
No-one lives forever.
Morbid but true.
HOW TO BE A GOOD MOM
This is why I encourage you to embrace this time with your child because it’s PRECIOUS.
Treasure every single second of it – the good and bad.
Because these moments now will just be memories in the future.
Life is not a dress rehearsal.
Today you get to show up as the mom you want to be.
This is true no matter how your kids are behaving.
You always, always, always get to show up as the mom you want to be.
No matter what their age, your kids need your love and attention now.
Wishing you the best of luck.
Much love,
Frances Vidakovic
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I’m Frances Vidakovic – a mindset & action coach for quietly ambitious women who want to stop overthinking and finally take aligned action. I help women achieve their goals and follow through on what matters, without sacrificing their sanity or soul.