This Sunday was Mother’s Day in the US and Australia and with it came the deserved deluge of gratitude and recognition of the sacrifices Mother’s make everyday for their children and their families. It was lovely to see the many messages of love, respect and affection for Mother’s on social media this weekend and I know when it’s Mother’s Day in the UK and I receive the same, it’s a touching time. But I’ve also been on the receiving end of a much more negative and pervasive emotion as a Mother on an almost daily basis – Mummy Guilt.
If you’re a working Mum you'll know what I mean. And if you’re a working Mum whose career takes you away from home, you will probably feel it even more keenly.
We can all beat ourselves up from time to time, but Mummy guilt is a very mean, destructive and unkind way of reminding ourselves how much being a Mother means to us.
If you suffer from Mummy guilt here’s my take on how to manage this emotion. I say ‘manage’ because that’s all I’ve been able to do across the 27 years I’ve been a Mother. I’ve certainly never been able to erase the self criticism, but I have managed to quieten it and by practicing this approach I’ve learnt to be kinder to myself.
There’s more than one way to be a great Mum.
If you’re a high achieving professional woman you probably suffer from the illusion that being a great Mum looks a certain way. We’re bombarded with images of Mum’s being perfectly organised and ever present, with a tidy, stylish home, after school schedules that run like clockwork, homework that is always overseen, immaculate school clothes, healthy packed lunches and family meals eaten around a kitchen table heavy with educational and motivational conversation ….. I could go on, but I’m sure you know how this movie plays!
No one I know, or ever have known, lives consistently like this. Maybe, like me you’ve tried and failed. I might have managed the perfect Mum routine for a couple of weeks but I can tell you it didn’t make me or anyone in my family happy. It led to extreme anxiety, resentment and ultimately failure.
It was only when I started to appreciate that just like ice cream, Mum’s come in many different flavours and all of them are delicious, that I started to adjust my view!
Indulge your passions.
Learn to appreciate the kind of Mum you are naturally. Take some time to think about the skills that you have. What are you good at? How does this show up in how you raise your children? There's no doubt that in exercising these skills you’re encouraging your children and helping them foster their own development and self expression.
I know my love of arts and crafts has encouraged my children’s creativity. From when my children were very small I’ve always been an enthusiastic advocate of all kinds of craft activity and our house was always full of half finished projects and our ‘art cupboard’ was well stocked.
I loved digging into artistic projects with my children and it was always a gift not a chore. I’m sure it also helped me manage my stress levels and gave me an creative escape from work. But it took me a long time to appreciate how this helped them too. My eldest daughter took a degree in Art and all three of them have indulged in creative endeavours of their own making including singing, acting and digital animation.
Do what brings you joy with your children, you will all benefit.
Accept your failings – they may be the greatest gift you can give your children.
I know I'm a wholly inadequate homework supervisor and so do my children!
My patience runs very thin on this particular activity and I hold an unshakeable admiration for teachers as a result of knowing this. Instead of standing over them and reviewing and correcting their homework, it was always their responsibility to get it done. This approach was compounded during the 17 years that I lived and worked in different countries as most evenings I simply wasn’t at home to do this job.
For years I beat myself up about this, but I came to realise that because of this ‘failing’ my children became independent of my help at homework time from an early age and it fostered a sense of responsibility in them that I could have squashed by being more of a ‘Tiger Mum’. All of them have done well academically and I've been spared the constant ‘homework checking’ that I know would have driven me crazy and probably created a resentful shaped wedge in our relationships.
Being a Mother has been the most wonderful gift this world has given me. I love my children endlessly, or as we often say in our house, ‘to the moon and back, and more’. I’m certainly not a perfect Mother, but my children know I love them.
I'm certain that you are a wonderful Mother too, so give yourself a break and enjoy them, they leave home soon enough!