I think as parents, our parenting is heavily influenced by our parents, just not in the ways that many people think. I’ll clarify: yes, I take many of the same parenting approaches that my mom took when raising me, from discipline to values….just as I see my children using many of those same strategies with their children. But I feel like there is a deeper undercurrent to that influence, something that speaks to the inner self of who our parents were as people and how they raised us, and the inner selves of who we are and how we raise…
The Importance of Self Care
As moms, educators or not, working out side the home moms and stay at home moms, we work hard. We are often the first ones up, and the last ones to bed. We do the work that doesn’t really count as ‘work’…meal preparation, house cleaning, laundry, organizing, yard care, child care, grocery shopping (ugh HATE grocery shopping), paying bills, running errands. If you work outside the home, you have 8 less hours in a day to do all the same tasks….and it is HARD. Some women make it look easy, some women have hired help- someone to come help with…
The stages of Momming…
Being a mom is undoubtedly one of the hardest jobs….ever. We constantly second guess ourselves, compare our momming techniques and offspring to others, and many of us struggle to balance our mom job with careers, marriages, divorces, and just life. And it is hard. We find ourselves defending our parenting, especially when it comes to controversial topics like co-sleeping, vaccinations, terrible two’s or the teen age day years…And just as we have survived one stage of development with our children, we are on to the next. As I watch my two youngest boys grow into young men, I am finding…