What Defines a Good Mother?

I’m not by any stretch of the imagination the “traditional” mother figure. You know – what my grandmother was… up before dawn, picking pinecones out of the front yard while the sausage sizzles, hemming garments while stirring sweet tea, keeping the housework 100% complete at all times and even sweeping, scrubbing, and mopping like 2 hours after foot surgery… then raising nieces and nephews and grandkids without ever raising her voice… Yeah, that. I never did fit that mold. It was rather tight on me and rather than try to squeeze in, I decided to try a different – less mentally/emotionally draining and physically demanding – approach to parenting. I’m sure the first thought in response to this paragraph is, “This is going to be the post in which she excuses herself for being LAZY.” No, not quite. I’m not going to say I don’t have a few lazy bones in my body, but if you define lazy as being a teenage mom, high school dropout who took initiative to get a GED so that I could be a mother of 3 starting college and landing President’s List (4.0 GPA) and Dean’s List (3.5+ GPA) until the last semester when a 22 credit hour load dropped me to a 3.49 but still graduated with honors, Phi Theta Kappa! … or if you define lazy as holding down a full time accounting job while in school full time majoring in Theology and maintaining a ministry while caring for 4 children, teaching orientation classes and singing in the church choir… or if you define lazy as working 65+ hours per week between two jobs with five kids all while maintaining a ministry, doing web design on the side, and just trying to find time to BREATHE… or if you define lazy as working from home every evening between 3-11pm, homeschooling, expanding my ministry, promoting/managing my web/graphic design business, blogging my family’s life story, and all the other various things that I manage to cram in each 24 hour day, then I suppose I am just that: LAZY. :)

Now that we’ve established all of THAT… haha… moving on. I’m not the most traditional mom. We don’t necessarily do “schedules” unnecessarily *as in AT ALL during the summer and/or weekends* and we’ve been known to do breakfast at 1pm from time to time. I’m sure some parent’s jaws would drop – some of you may even need a Prozac just reading this. If you choose to read on and end up having a nervous breakdown, DO NOT SEND ME THE BILL. You’ve been forewarned. <giving a few moments for those who wish to click off … 5…4…3… okay time’s up> My kids will never look back and say I kept the CLEANEST house or that I NEVER slept past 8am. They will be the first to tell you that I don’t freak out over every (or any, for that matter) drop of blood or and that sometimes they run OUT of clothes before the laundry hits the washing machine. But, you know what – when I look back at my childhood – before everything went to crap – I couldn’t care less that my grandmother’s house was always clean. Truth be told, I did my best to mess it up (lol) What matters to me looking back is that as a child, I felt SAFE and I felt LOVED. Even though at home, we lived off of pancakes, brownies, and Ramen noodles (because my mom was just a horrible cook – but that’s for another post, another day) I was HAPPY. I look back and all the imperfections that made my mom who she was were what make me smile now. She may not have had everything “together” but when it came to teaching us, raising us, and loving us… making us feel SPECIAL and BEAUTIFUL and CHERISHED… she never once fell short when I was a kid. As much as I swore when I was a teen I would NEVER turn into my mom, I find myself now TRYING to live up to everything that she was when I was a child. I don’t want my kids to ever look back and say that I spent all my time on appearances – that I couldn’t let them be kids because they wouldn’t be “tidy” enough being themselves, or that I was too caught up in making things perfect that I forgot to cherish the memories of how things REALLY are.

I think as parents, we’ve gotten into this competition with other parents where in our minds we are saying, “My family is better than yours. My house is cleaner than yours. I multitask better than you.” (and some get in on the competition who don’t even HAVE kids but offer opinions anyway…) and in our desperation to prove our worth as a parent, we forget all about what makes us parents – OUR KIDS. I’m not going to show them a side of me that isn’t real, and I don’t expect them to ever feel like they have to put a ‘game face’ on for ANYBODY. We’re not the Brady Bunch… there’s no Alice. The kids learn responsibility through chores – and when they don’t do them, no one runs behind them to get them done. Chances are, if you come to my house this summer unannounced, we’ll have to move a pile of clean – unfolded – laundry for you to have a seat on the couch. The kids likely will have their hair thrown in a ponytail and a couple of them may have slept until 10am and are still wearing the clothes they passed out in the night before. But they will be ALL smiles – BEAUTIFUL, precious, genuine, happy smiles… and it’s more probable than not that we have brownies to offer, chaotic entertainment in no short supply, and a healthy appetite for adult conversation! I’m not trying to be in competition with anyone… and I’m perfectly fine with knowing that there are parents who do a much better job than me at housekeeping, child rearing, homemaking, Betty Crocker-ing, and a mountain of other womanly duties. As long as my children and my husband are healthy, happy, and in love with the “me” that I am… that’s as close to perfection as I will ever come. And despite how differently I am as a parent than my mother or grandmother were, I am confident than I am a good mother. No one can makes me believe otherwise. I love my kids and if someone were to mess with them, mama bear would have claws drawn. My babies know they are my heart – yes, there is more to parenting, but THAT in itself – to me – is the most important part of being a mother: BEING a mother. Everything else is superficial and caters to those AROUND you – not your children…

So… in saying all of this, my question is: What defines a ‘good’ mother? Comments, please :) Yes, down there…

Until next time...



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