How to Be a Good Mom (Not a Perfect Mom)

From the moment I found out I was pregnant with my first son, I wanted to everything just right–to be a good mom. All mamas do. We want to eat the best and do the right activities and avoid the bad stuff–anything we can do to assure that we have a healthy and happy baby. Before our babies are even born, we are already striving for perfection in motherhood.

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It doesn’t stop when the baby is born. In fact, it gets increasingly worse as time goes on. It seems that no matter we do as a mom, something or someone is telling us we aren’t doing it right or it’s not good enough.

Oh, they probably don’t say it to our faces (although a few do!), but we get the messages loud and clear. Here are just a few examples of the ways we can start to feel like we aren’t doing it right as a mom:

• We see a blog post about how much better it is to make baby food ourselves. Just puree it in your home blender and freeze it in ice cube trays. So simple! No chemicals! No preservatives! Also, no food for the kid when you forget to thaw it! I actually tried making my own baby food once. Never. Again.
• A celebrity on TV tells us about her new line of super-duper diapers! They’re so pretty! They’re totally safe for babies’ sensitive skin! Yes, they cost double what you’d spend at WalMart and you have to have them shipped to your house on a weekly basis–no running out to the dollar store if you run out at 1 am. But they’re what your baby needs! (Worse than this might be our friends who tell us that cloth diapering is the only way to go. No, thank you.)
• Then there are the toys. This one starts not long after birth and gets bigger and more expensive as time goes on. Your baby needs sensory stimulation, so you  definitely need this toy with the music and flashing lights. You want your baby girl to grow up to be smart, so you must buy her all the STEM toys. Then come the trikes and bikes and Barbie jeeps and on and on it goes. Let’s not even talk about the gaming systems.
• And what about food? I grew up on a steady diet of Lunchables, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Ramen noodles. Today’s kids want gourmet choices, and they have moms who comply. I admit, I fell into this trap when my oldest started school. I was going to send him a healthy lunch every day! But one look at the prices of the “healthy” choices in my grocery store put a stop to that. By about the second week I was tossing a Lunchable and a Little Debbie cake into his bag and calling it good. Occasionally he even gets a banana!

No matter what we do as moms it sometimes seems like we can always do something better or different. We live in a constant mindset of, “If I could only buy this or do that I would have happier or better kids. I would be a perfect mom.”

But I’m afraid to tell you that the perfect mother doesn’t exist. We think she does because we see her portrayed over and over again in our friends or on our social media feeds, or even just in our own minds. And we try so hard to measure up.

Trying to measure up to that ideal woman only leaves us sad, miserable and wanting more. I can’t say that I’ve stopped striving to be the perfect mom.

But I’ve realized that I can’t be perfect, and trying so hard to get there only hurts me and my family. I have learned to identify when I’m struggling for perfection, and to take steps to stop and just be a good mom for my boys.

Here are some things I’m learning:

Hit the “unfollow” button.

I am going to admit something to you. I love social media. But sometimes it’s just too much. If you have a friend who always makes you feel like a loser or a less-than-great mom, it’s totally okay to unfollow them.

The same goes for blogs. There are so many mom blogs that are supposedly meant to help you improve in one or more areas of your life. But if you read them and suddenly feel the need to overhaul your life to somehow be a better mom, you need to unsubscribe!

I love reading blogs and follow several great ones. I think it’s wonderful that blogs give us a chance to learn so many things. But if they make us reach a place of discontent they are doing us more harm than good.

Stop playing the comparison game.

This is a huge issue for me. It’s so easy to see other moms and think “if I could be like her, I’d be perfect.” The crazy thing about comparison is that it doesn’t even have to be someone you know.

Have you ever sat somewhere and watched another mom with her kids? She’s cute, trim, fit, well-dressed, smiling and just overall perfect. And in the few minutes of time that you spend watching her, you suddenly feel like a total loser mom. (Am I the only person who does this?)

But this game has two sides. Sometimes we see a mom who’s struggling to control multiple kids, her hair is disheveled, the kids are crying, she’s yelling…and suddenly we feel like supermom. We cannot afford to play this game on either side.

No one wins when we compare ourselves to someone else.

(Here is an amazing book about this topic that I highly recommend!)

Focus on being the best mom you can be.

A few years ago I heard an ad on the radio that still sticks with me. It’s an ad inviting people to be foster parents and the tagline is something like, “There’s no one way to be a perfect parent, but a thousand ways to be a really good one.”

It’s true for motherhood, too. No matter how hard we try, we can never be absolutely perfect moms, but we can be good moms. We can spend the important moments with our kids. We can bake the cookies and play the games and give the hugs.

When we fail we can pick ourselves up again and keep going. Not striving for perfection, but striving to honor God and be good moms.

Our kids aren’t looking for perfection. They don’t care if our hair is fixed, if dinner is organic or if we need to lose a few pounds. They really only want a mom who is present and loves them.

I haven’t figured out how to stop trying so hard to be the perfect mom. I still have stay-at-home mom struggles. But I’m learning to stop focusing on trying to be a mom that I’m not made to be.

I’m trying to stop falling prey to great marketing strategies that tell me this thing is the most important thing and it will make my boys love me so much. I’m trying to stop being a mom like someone else, and just be the mom God created me to be.

Not a perfect mom. But a really good one.

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