The Perfect Mother and How Not to Live up to Her..

 Recipe for the Perfect Mother:

• The perfect mother is never late.
• She never forgets what her child needs for school.
• She is calm at all times and hardly ever raises her voice to her children. Instead when it comes to discipline she talks to them (not at them) with a firm, controlled tone (at ALL times), which of course is guaranteed to get the response Super Nanny, would applaud.
• No matter how tired she is, the perfect mother never complains.
• Her house is always clean and her children’s clothes are always beautifully ironed and fresh – without any outside help.
• She bakes.
• She makes all her baby food from fresh and gasps at the very thought of giving her baby anything from a jar.
• No matter what she is doing (and no matter how urgent) she drops everything to indulge her child’s every whim, for their needs are of course much more important than her own.
• The perfect mother never makes mistakes.
• She is completely unselfish.
• She always knows what to do.
• She does all of this while still managing to look immaculate.
• Her children are her precious little wunderkinds, who are perfectly behaved, never embarrass her in public and can probably read at the age of three and count to ten in five different languages soon after they learn to talk…

If you tick every box on this list, congratulations…now please add ‘urban myth’ to your string of achievements! The perfect mother is of course open to interpretation but deep down I believe many a good mother may at times have found herself attempting to live up to the more perfect version of her.

Feelings of Failure

The other morning I woke later than I should have, in the spare room, with my seven-month-old baby lying peacefully on the bed beside me. It had been another rough night of shuttling constantly between my own room and the nursery to soothe my teething infant.

As I attempted to creep out of his room at 4 a.m (acutely aware that I had just over two hours left of potential sleep before the chaotic morning ritual of school run), he erupted into the sort of loud, protesting cry that would send any mother with more than one child into a frantic panic for fear of waking his siblings. Fast forward one hour and we finally drifted to sleep, both exhausted.

I overslept my alarm and so the day began as I hoped it wouldn’t, running late and full of stress. I arrived slightly late to school but still before register, however when I arrived, I realised, I had left my son’s school lunch on the side in the kitchen and forgotten it was own clothes day. Okay, admittedly, I hadn’t been the only one and we worked out the lunch but still I found myself hanging my head with guilt as I left the school, feeling I’d let my child down and every bit the failed mother. ‘Note to self: MUST be more organised, sleep or no sleep’….

I imagine I am not the only mother to have felt such guilt. Guilt, after all is almost a given when it comes to our children because no matter how much we love them, we often find a reason to berate ourselves when it comes to our parenting of them.

Good versus Perfect

The women who inspire me most are the ones who are not afraid to admit that their halo is not always shiny and that they, like me, sometimes make mistakes. There is nothing worse (in my opinion) than a smug, gloating mother, whose children are (apparently) perfect and who seems to have cracked it all, pretending to breeze through motherhood like she’s Mother Teresa. The reality is that she, like us, will have bad days and her children will sometimes play up. These are the mothers who ultimately do a disservice to other mothers because they unrealistically raise the bar and feed the insecurities of many a good mother who may sometimes struggle to meet the high expectations she may have placed on herself. Ironically, the smug mother may well also be a good mother but her own insecurities and the desire to keep up appearances lead her to hide behind a cloak of unrealistic perfection. I’m not suggesting we all fall apart in public every time we have a bad day but surely we should at least be true to ourselves?

So how about instead of striving for perfection in motherhood, we focus on what’s really important – loving our children and being there for them…Give me a good mother (warts and all) over a perfect one any day, she is bound to be more human for a start!

The Good Mother Guide

Inspired by the book ‘How NOT to be a Perfect Mother’ the international best seller by Libby Purves, I decided to write down my own values on motherhood and what I believe makes a good mother. These ideas are built on my own experience as a mother and a daughter, my philosophy on life and the admiration I have for all my ‘good mother’ friends:

• Accept your child for who they are and not what you WANT them to be.

• Listen and talk things through. Even if you don’t agree, allow your child to have a voice and develop their sense of self.

• Encourage – don’t push. A quote I identified with was that children, when encouraged to connect with passions of their own choosing, are inclined to work hard and can achieve success at the highest levels through their own intrinsic motivation.

• Praise them. We all love praise but children in particular respond very positively to praise. It builds their self-esteem and improves their confidence. Instead of focusing on what they haven’t achieved, praise them for what they have.

• Believe in your children, even when some days you may doubt yourself.

• Practice positive discipline rather than ‘punish’ your child. The word ‘punishment’ often gets tossed  around when it comes to reprimanding our unruly children (heaven knows I’ve used it before). But personally I find the concept of ‘punishing’ a child a little draconian.

Some may argue that a draconian/severe approach is sometimes needed when it comes to dealing
with a child who has stepped heavily out of line but where possible I prefer to practice structured,
positive discipline, giving them the opportunity to choose their own behaviour: “If you do that,
this will be the consequence, or you can choose to do it this way.” We discuss briefly afterwards
why they think what they did was the wrong choice and then move on. I do this in the hope that
they may eventually learn from their actions and the impact those actions have on others around
them.

• Show an interest in your child’s interests and develop them. My six-year-old son, for example, loves reading and learning about science and the world around him so I buy him relevant colourful books that we can sit and read together or he can tell me about after he’s read them. The great thing is that I get to learn a thing or too as well!

• Teach politeness and good manners to your children so that they learn to respect and appreciate what others do for them. This is a task that in the early days feels like it will never end. My children are just about remembering their pleases and thank you’s after reminding them both on a daily basis for most of their young lives, but even now they still need to be prompted at times.

• Incentivise and reward your children and make mundane tasks such as tidying their room fun rather than a chore. I find my children respond with much more enthusiasm when I turn things into a game or motivate them by saying that they will get 10 pence for their money boxes if they can get their toys packed away. Demanding that they did these things was normally always met with resistance. Thanks to my Mum and Nan for those pearls of wisdom!

• Teach them about your values and help them develop an appreciation of what they have.

• Try to exercise patience. As mothers, most of us have earned a degree in the subject as our little darlings regularly push our patience to the limit!