This morning I posted about the ugliness of motherhood. It’s not unusual to see such a rant on blogs or Facebook. Mothers everywhere cry out in frustration and desperation when they are having a hard time or a hard day.
We are constantly inundated with two views of motherhood.
We see the pretty side of motherhood: the birthday pictures, funny times and beautiful family moments. We see our friends as their children achieve new feats and as their families thrive.
And like my post this morning, we see the messy side of motherhood: the times when mommies become overwhelmed and frustrated, when we’ve had enough and have no other human adult to turn to so we turn to our virtual friends.
All we share is the beauty in motherhood and the ugly in motherhood. But we’re missing the most important part of the journey: the recovery.
Because what you didn’t see when reading my hasty post this morning was that after I had put the baby to nap and hit “publish,” I returned downstairs to my girls still at the kitchen table doing their school. They had reassemble my phone and collected all the coupons I’d thrown in the air as I stormed out of the room. They had forgiven me.
We’ve gone about our day as usual. We had lunch and the girls went to the grocery store with me. They generally followed directions and I didn’t turn back into that raging lunatic when one of them shoved gum down her pants in an attempt to steal it (more as a protest against me not allowing them have gum than as a premeditated unlawful event) nor did I lose it when Doodle screamed at the gate when I left him home with Grandpa or when Sugarplum wailed on the floor for a good hour about the last 10 spelling words she had to finish before going swimming (a task I had set out hour before during breakfast, before any hell broke loose).
At some point after my meltdown, I stopped and whispered in Sugarplum’s ear “I’m sorry for earlier. If I try to better with you, can you do the same for me?” Because we’re all human and we all make mistakes and I think the greatest disservice we can do to our children is to not let them see us fail.
But it’s not about showing them our mistakes or teaching them the fact that we all make mistakes. What is important is our children seeing how we manage our mistakes, how we recover from our failures because that is what they are going to learn from. They are going to learn not only the appropriate way to act by following our example but they are also going to learn how to apologize for their choices that affect other people.
It’s not about always being perfect and right and making all the best choices. It’s about growing and learning from our mistakes. It’s about how we recover from the ugly moments and what we do with our mess from there.
Love the post. It’s true how important it is for children to learn how to recover from mistakes and it’s always very humbling to see that they forgive easily and move on, sometimes quicker than us. Hugs.
Yes! We hear so much about how we need to be “good examples” or role models for our kids, but we need to remember this means showing how to appropriately manage ALL our emotions, not just the happy ones.
Its true kids are better than us at forgiveness. We could learn a thing or two from them. It probably has to do with shorter attention spans.