Hello, my name is Amanda, and I am an imperfect mother.
According to the perfect mother rulebook, I am without doubt one of the worst;
- I use disposable nappies
- I stopped breastfeeding because I got tired of it
- I let my children watch too much TV
- I once left them alone in the bath while I ran to answer the door
- I let them eat coco-pops
- I don’t always make them wear a hat
- I take them off the naughty step too early
- I even think that motherhood is sometimes boring
In my world, being a good mother is making sure that above all else they feel loved and cherished and that they laugh, a lot. Loving and minding (and feeding obviously) is my manifesto of motherhood. Bonus points if they hang up their coats and don’t choke each other with skipping ropes.
I’m not saying I neglect the important stuff: We brush teeth, we share and we don’t shout. But I place more priority on their sense of being and their self worth at this stage of their little lives. I champion laughing over labels, and compromising over competition.
I’m tired of seeing everywhere I turn, mostly on Instagram, that there is Judge Mother, an intangible beast who frowns at the idea of toast for dinner or not making your own chicken goujons from scratch or skipping the bedtime story because you have had enough and your brain hurts. Missed the deadline to sign up for swimming lessons? So shoot me. Still not back in the skinny jeans? It is lucky for everyones sake that I am even dressed.
Who invented this monster than makes us feel so inadequate? I’m sure is entirely my own fault for trying to quantify my effort but that doesn’t mean that pressure doesn’t exist. It is like a peer-to-peer comparison in which I always feel like I come up short; because how can you quantify how much love and teaching you have opened up to your child to that day.
You can count the hours it took to embroider their name on their ballet bag, but how can you explain to Judge Mother that you mostly forget the ballet bag, but you stopped and showed them the tide going out today and basked in their glee as they digested this information and stared at you in awe like you invented the universe.
There are those mums that can handpaint the mural on their childs bedroom AND manage to love and teach and bake from scratch, and are generally amazing. And I’m delighted the world has such wonderful women (and men) as part of it. But all I’m saying is to cut us mortal mothers some slack when we put jam sandwiches in the lunchbox or forget the roll out mat from the nappy-bag.
We are all in this together.
