Getting It Right

I have heard very few people brag about being a good mother. In fact, most of the time it seems that we women spend our time mourning about our failures as a mother.

I hate to break it to you, but there is no such thing as a perfect mother. Never has been and never will be. One of the things that encourages me is the thought that God gave my children to me. So I'm the best mother for them. I think sometimes Satan wants to defeat us so he sits on our shoulders and tells us how lousy we are. He points out how much we fail.

SO DON'T LISTEN!!! Sometimes you need to just stop and focus on something you're doing right. Remind yourself that you're not so bad after all. Sometimes you can even turn a failure into the opportunity to be Mother of the Year! For instance--once when my kids were little, I didn't have any milk to put on their cereal at breakfast. I felt horrible. I hadn't had time to go grocery shopping. But when you have a bunch of little kids, who runs out of milk? That's the one thing you should always have. I scrounged around for something remotely healthy to give them, but there were no options. So instead of berating myself on what a loser I was, I decided to do something different instead.

I gave my kids ice cream for breakfast.

They were thrilled. I turned a dismal situation into a party. For years they reminded each other of the time they had ice cream for breakfast. For one morning, I was the coolest mother on earth.

A word of warning: ice cream for breakfast once--cool mother. Doing it on a regular basis--you may qualify to run for worst mother of the year. it's amazing how thin a line there is between being really creative and just plain bad. : )

So how about you? Leave a comment and brag about something you do with your kids that makes you a great mother. Feel free to leave comments about how your kids' friends always beg to come to your house because you do such cool things. List the wonderfully involved crafts you design and execute yourself for your children's entertainment. If you are a great mother, my hat's off to you! Brag about it here!

if you're more like me and creativity runs toward deciding how best to kill off characters in your book, well--dish up some ice cream tomorrow morning. In a pinch, cookies or chocolate work just as well. And then tell us all about it.