A perfect mother

I've been thinking lately about my priorities as a mother. Identifying our priorities is the only way to achieve what we want in life, but figuring out what they are can be complicated. Not only do we get distracted and forget our real priorities, but we can sometimes be convinced to either change or add unnecessarily to our list. Particularly in this age of social media, when I come across a good idea, I've found it helpful to ask myself: Is this something I really care about? Or am I convincing myself I should care about it?

If you browse around Pinterest, read mommy blogs (not this one of course), or poke around Facebook or Instagram for any amount of time, you could no doubt convince yourself that kids shouldn't ever watch television; they should play outside a minimum of 4 hours a day; you should artfully craft your child's lunch into playful jungle and farm scenes; you must never look at your phone in your child's presence; you need to learn to take professional quality photos of your kids; you should purchase your child's clothing exclusively at hand-crafted online boutiques; you shouldn't give your kids an allowance because they need to learn that work is expected, not rewarded; you must give your kids an allowance so they can learn to manage money; you should be hosting beautifully decorated dinner parties at least once a month; your children's birthday parties must be held strictly to an adorable adult-friendly theme; you should create cute laminated chore charts; your kids should be reading chapter books before kindergarten; you must maintain a strict cleaning schedule; and you should save your family thousands through couponing. Whew, I'm exhausted just from typing all of that.

None of those is a bad idea. In fact, the reason I use these examples is because at one point in time or another, I convinced myself that I needed to implement each one. Luckily though, I've started to get better at weeding out what I really care about from what someone else has found useful or important. It's always helpful to get inspiration from other moms, but if you don't have confidence in your own choices, you could easily drive yourself crazy trying to adopt every good idea you come across.

Maybe I'm more indecisive and confused than most, but what I think I want and what I actually want, can take time to decipher. Sometimes I have to try out a new idea out for a while before I realize it just isn't working. An important thing to keep in mind is that just because something is helpful to another mom, and you once thought it would be a good thing for you too, there's no need to feel guilty letting it go when it isn't a good fit. There's a parallel here to what decluttering guru Marie Kondo says about letting go of possessions in her best-selling book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (I highly recommend it!). She is convinced that there are objects in our life whose sole purpose was to show us that we didn't need them and to teach us what we do like. I think the same can be said for good ideas in the mothering realm. If you try something out and it doesn't work, let it go and move on, that idea served its purpose. No guilt necessary. Ironically, I had a conversation with a friend recently about how overwhelmed she was trying to implement all of the strict decluttering, organizing, and folding protocols KonMari (as her readers call her) prescribes in her book. I felt proud of my realistic approach as I told her that I'd taken what the book said with a grain of salt, implementing the ideas I thought were useful and leaving the rest.

I haven't always found that realistic approach easy in the realm of motherhood, but I'm getting better. For example, I don't mind my kids watching some television; in fact, it's necessary for my sanity. I still admire families whose kids have zero screen time, but I've realized that's not what works for us, and in reality, it's not what I want. It's really helpful for me to have my kids watch a show in the afternoon while I make dinner or when they wake up too early (5:30 am!!!). But I still find myself feeling guilty any time I turn on the TV. Why? Because I convinced myself at one time that being a screen free household should be the ideal and I haven't been able to let that idea go even though I know it doesn't work for us. I'm still working on focusing only on what I really care about.

Different mothers prioritize different things and guess what, that's totally ok! The kid with the regular square shaped peanut butter sandwich probably has a mom who loves to take her kids hiking. The child who watches cartoons every morning probably gets extra play time with mom later because she was able finish work she needed to get done. The scary part about this age of social media is that we can start to not only try to be like someone else, but to also try to be like everyone else because there are just so many people in front of our eyes. There's no way one woman can possess all of the strengths, talents, and time that the many fabulous moms on the internet collectively possess. To avoid that ridiculous pitfall, I'm committed to deciding what my priorities are, sticking to them, trying inspiring ideas as I come across them, and abandoning them guilt-free if they don't work out. I'm focused on becoming the best mom I uniquely can be, not the mother some articles I read on the internet convinced me I should be.