Happy Mother’s Day to all the pretty mothers on the planet. Take a bow for all the things you do for your kids, for your family, for keeping all the tangible and intangible identity of the house intact by laying your own yearning aside.
MOTHERS! The loveliest, the strangest, creation of GOD.
Why loveliest? Because mothers are the only soul who makes us believe in unconditional love, at least 9months before our existence on the planet.
Why Strangest? Because even the GOD is failed to measure the depth of her care and the heights of her patience.
Read More : Meri Maa (My Mother)
Parenting is a never-ending journey; I strongly believe that no one is perfect here; no one knows everything. A mother also grows with her growing kid; she also learns and earns experience by her mistakes, failures—trials in her journey of motherhood.
When the whole social media is flooded over gifting ideas, pics, messages, deals, and discounts on the special occasion of Mother’s Day, I decided to pen down five very crucial pointers that I wish every mother of this era, including me, must know while dealing with their kids also while dealing with her own aspirations.
Things All mothers should keep in mind::
1). Stop Giving Examples Of Your Time
We mothers or parent has a widespread habit, throwing examples of own time to time, like ‘ how good we were to our parents, ‘how smart we were when of our kid’s age,’ ‘how hard worker we were,’ etc. Stop right away; trust me, this is the worst practice of motherhood or parenthood. And you know most of the time you are lying; you are projecting the morphed picture before your kids. And tell me, have any false story can be the foundation of the future? No, Never!
Instead of weaving falsify words, share the true story of your failure, the struggles you faced to reach your destination. About the worst day when you made your parents cry by not paying heed to their words, for which you regret later, and how you went all the way to rectify your wrong feats. As, in the end, you know, a failure story has more angle to tell, a wider range of audience to listen, comparative to a success story.
And tell me, how could you compare the two different eras that have completely different factors to pull through. I agree the ground of morals and ethics never change, no matter which era we live in, but at the same time, you have to agree that the factors of survival change every next hour.
2). Stop Over-expectations: Your Kids Have Your Genes Only
We mothers are the best critics of our children. We criticize them, push them to do good, amend their shortcomings, and care for them. In racing the brat, we often push our kids to do things that don’t match neither us nor our kids’ taste and personality. We forget to acknowledge the basis of all truth that, ultimately, our kids are part of our genes. Whatever they perform, behave, or think will be having more or less their parent’s traits.
Unfortunately, small kids’ real qualities are under major threat in all this mess. If they lose interest in doing, you made them learn at an early stage to showcase your wishes. Things become even messier for the whole family in the gradual age of growing. Do not force your kids to gain your own social media followers, have patience, and incorporate your time in exploring kids’ interests and positive approaches to showcase them.
Reality Check : A prompt video of kiddos over random topics attracts more viewers rather than the rote versions. Try it!
We can work on our shortcomings; honest hard work and practices can change the whole picture from the origin. Above all, there is another side: kids could have equal chances to differ from their parent’s attributes. Everyone born with their own limitations and boundaries, and expecting miraculous changes wouldn’t be unfair? Hence, accept and respect the flow & fluency of adaptation of your kids!
3). Personality Speaks Louder Than Branded Stuff
Dear Mothers, please do not drain yourself in making such models whose happiness lies on the branded stuff; instead, let your child understand the value of life tagged with the branded simplicity, self-worth, valued- relations and money, endless learning, humbleness, and the last but not the least art of living with limited resources and urge to earn it more. Let your kid be remembered in society as a person of good qualities rather than a mannequin of branded stuff.
Learning the lesson of value money and budgeting starts with the practice of fixed monthly pocket money. Start giving pocket money to your kids. Follow the discipline of spending it sincerely, I repeat it for parents, especially for mothers, “ Follow the discipline.” Since we mothers are the first to cuddle our child and breach the expenditure rules, we know our child struggles hard to get his favorite toys/stuff. These small practices by mothers lead the kids to learn patience to adjust, understand real needs, the concept of saving, and the decision to spend mindfully altogether.
4). Do Not Throw Your Bag Of Grudges On Kids
More than fathers, we mothers are quick in making relations in the neighborhood or in our relations. We trained our children to be friends with our friends/relative kids, and the amazing part, our kids gelled up more quickly than we adults. Kids soft hearts welcome the newbie in town/terms with open arms. The worst truth is that we mothers are also the first to make friendship/relations critical to survive. In keeping our egos alive, we let the friendship collapse.
Following the consequences, we immediately want our kids to cut off all the chords with their friends just because we silly adults are not on talking terms anymore. Isn’t it another level of unfairness with the soft mind? Do not let your grudges enter the tiny tot’s alliance.
If you really want to maintain a distance for some reason, take your steps affirmatively and give time to kids. Your sudden off behavior will raise so many unanswered questions to the tiny minds that might provoke them to judge people before interacting.
A frequent change of a kid’s friend circle, depending on Mother’s temperament and equation, can affect a kid’s emotional intelligence badly in the long term. Losing in ego war is always better than the winning emotionally broken kid.
5). Stop Instilling Rigid Thoughts To Soft Minds:
Who doesn’t like their kids to be the smartest, flaring the flag of their caste and religion high in the sky? Everyone right? Making your child aware of their talent, their origin is an ultimate idea, also the essential aspect of parenting. Things become chaotic when this awareness is placed with rigidity in small soft minds, for, eg.
It can be tempting for parents to promote the thoughts of being smartest in kid’s minds. However, this can develop arrogance in your child, who already started dwelling in the world of superiority and given up on any further learnings. Similarly, the thought of having a strict value for own religion is good, but degrading the rest of the religions is not right. Before anything, make your kid learn to pay due respect to all the religion.
So on this Mother’s Day will you promise yourself to take extra care of yourself and to never-ending learning of Parenthood/Motherhood? Do share your thoughts in comments.
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The most practical and relateable post for moms! I agree with each tip and follow most of these, though sometimes I do give examples from my childhood…. though I am sure those go to deaf ears,, but it makes me happy 😉
Haha,😃 Thank you, Dipika for liking the post!
Personality indeed speaks louder than words. Absolutely loved reading your post, Archana. Taking care of ourselves should always top the chart in our life because one has to be happy in order to make their families happy 🙂
Couldn’t agree more on this!
Very well penned down. Actually we need to keep all these points in mind and first of all we should stop giving example of ‘in our time’ And why to compare? Really pointless.
Haha I loved “your kids.have your genes only” part. Giving examples of our times is something I have heard growing up. I have consciously tried to avoid it with my child.
I loved everything you have written here and the best one was sharing the story of failures with kids. As I do this often. I share the story of failure with my daughter often and how I still got up and started again and reached where I am today.
Tis is such a helpful post for mother’s. Always don’t expect and go with the flow is what works for me. But keep appreciating wherever you get an opportunity is what I do
Perfectly put. It’s not right to put our opinions, thghts n judgements into our kids too. They have a mind of their own n let them choose. The worst thing is to compare our n their time which was way different and has not similarity now. Kids now have so much exposure due to gadgets and social media and Netflix and all. The world is already in their hands at this age. Which was nt in our case. So no use comparing.
I need to stop with the first point u mentioned. I do it at times jokingly. But on a serious note, Whatever u said is worth noting.
Loved all the pointers Archana and I agree that as a parent, we always have higher set of expectation from our kids, and sometimes with this emotion, we forget to enjoy the joy ride of parenthood. life is too short to live, enjoying small moment of togetherness is much more important than being perfect in all areas of life.
I echo with your thoughts dear, glad you liked it!
so damn perfect all your points are .. honestly I feel these days Mother’s have way too much of expectations from their kids and because of which they burden them and fail to acknowledge the simplicity or their efforts. I think if this corrected a better mindful shift can take place
You spoke my mind Sonam, glad you liked it!
Over expectation kills, I try not to expect much from the child. You have curated the best list and so agree with it. I would also like to add “Mom Guilt” in this list, we should never be bothered about it
Absolutely true! So agree on the pointer ‘Mom Guilt,’ noted too!
Such a well curated post! The definitely have to stop giving examples my examples to my son and go with the flow. Exag day is different and each day brings new learnings for both the child and the mother.
Thank you Simrit!
So perfectly penned down Archana. Understanding that we are upbringing our kids in a very different world so not comparing it with our days should be the mantra. Parenting or mothering should be instinctive and real not comparative.
Thank you so much, Alpana. Yes, Parenting and Mothering should be real.