First of all, if you’re here, looking for ways to improve yourself, you’re already the best mom for your kids! Please don’t forget that! God didn’t choose you out of a handful of others to be their mom. He created you to be exactly what your children need in a mother. Just let that sink in for a moment. It’s not a competition. If it is, you’ve already won!
However, God does need us to be our best and parenting can wear us thin. I think back to how exhausting the young years, from infancy to around age six, were and my heart is filled with compassion for you mamas who are, essentially, your children’s lifeline. You are the source of their every need…and boy, that gets tiring!
On the other hand, there is an absolute mental exhaustion that comes with parenting teenagers (at least some teenagers). Sometimes more independence actually causes more exhaustion and sometimes, my teenager just makes me so mad! And I’m not going to lie. I’m TIRED!
And then God draws me near to Him and shows me that I am His child too and dependent on Him for nearly EVERYTHING. Thank God He is always at His best, never gets exhausted, and never throws up His hands in utter defeat!
And thank God that we can ask Him to fill in the gaps when we are so exhausted we can’t think straight; or when we’ve lost our self-control and yelled or said something unkind to our children.
Almost every time I have written lately, one of my teenage sons and I have not been on good terms. We work things out, but by the end of the week, things are not good again. Today is one of those days…and I’m writing about how to be the best mom you can be. So incredibly humbling.
I’m not the best mom I can be. I can always be a better mom! Sure, I am doing my best in the moment, but long-term, there are definitely improvements to be made. And these improvements aren’t made without opportunities to be different and to do better.
I don’t write to you today (or really any day!) as some expert, perfect mom. (Ask my kids!) But I do write to you as an observant, educated-by-others-who-do-it-better, willing-to-put-in-the-work mom who has learned from her mistakes, as well as the mistakes of others. We can both be better! You can be a better mom too!
How to be the Best Mom You Can Be:
- Recognize that this is the most important job you will ever do!
I know it might sound cliche, but this is the absolute truth. If you were working at ANY other job, you would be working to become the best you could be, in order to earn the highest wage you could. At least, that’s how most people treat a job (although, I’m not sure anymore!)
But because we don’t get paid; we don’t get performance reviews; and the only promotion we may ever earn is that of grandparent (that’s God’s reward for us keeping our kids alive, I’m pretty sure!), often, we become complacent about parenting.
Friend, we cannot slack in this department! Other jobs may come and go, but we are raising the future! We need strong leaders who will stand up for the right things. Our nation has a level of depravity that would make even criminals blush. Now, more than ever, we need to raise lions, not sheep!
This is imperative! Your nation is depending on you to do your part!
- Approve of Your Child–
When my oldest son was a baby, I read The Blessing by Gary Smalley and John Trent. It was eye-opening!
In short, it talks about the need of a child to gain the approval of parents and how, if a child never receives this “blessing,” he or she may continually seek it long into adulthood.
I have witnessed this firsthand, in three of my closest friends. I have observed each of them as they have striven and striven in their adult lives to gain the approval of their parents, long after they ought to have been.
Eventually, all three of them have had to make peace with the fact that to their parents, they will never be enough. And here’s the sobering part as a parent–in all three cases, my friends have had to basically cut their parents out of their lives completely because a healthy relationship is simply impossible.
Let that marinate.
If you do not give your approval freely, your child will strive and strive for it until you do. If, at some point, your child does earn your approval, he will continue to strive and constantly feel as though he is never enough.
In most cases, parents who don’t give their approval freely will never be pleased. At that point, your child will be faced with a decision: to move on without the parent and release himself from the grip; or to live a life of discontent and pain (usually with some manipulation thrown in there too!) constantly working to please his or her parent(s).
And when I say that you need to give your approval, I don’t mean that you need to approve of everything your children do! Oh boy! That would be a disaster!
No. Instead, it means that your love is not based on your child’s performance. You give your love as freely when your child messes up as you do when your child scores the winning goal, or earns the most prestigious leadership award possible.
Last night, I was, well, pretty hopping mad at one of my sons. I vented to a friend and this was her response: “Tell him, ‘I love you no matter what. We are done talking for tonight. Let’s pray and ask God to surprise us with something good so that we can all feel loved until we can reach a solution to this problem.’”
She gets it! Incidentally, she has chased the approval of her parents for a very long time and has finally come to terms with the fact that she’s not going to receive it any time soon. Instead, she uses her pain to encourage moms like me with the right words to say to let my son know that I approve of him; that he has what it takes; and that he doesn’t have to earn my love.
- Give Freely–
As long as we’re on the topic of giving your approval and your love freely, there are some other things we need to give freely to our children. Time and money…and most of all, forgiveness.
Before you get excited, I don’t mean that you need to give your child money every time he asks. You will never hear that from me! But there are times when we do need to give our money freely for our children.
One time, an acquaintance of mine told me the story of being at her grandson’s first birthday party. Her husband grumbled all the way home, “That kid is so spoiled. He got more gifts for his first birthday than I got my whole life. His parents should take all that crap back to the store!” His wife replied, “Okay, but do you want God to do that to you? We have far more than most other people. Do you want God to take it all back from you?”
There is definitely a time and a place for giving. We don’t need to give our kids everything they ask for, but be on the lookout for times when being generous will give them a glimpse of who God is. Remember that we are their first examples of God! And most people who have a hard time understanding a relationship with God–that there is a God who loves us unconditionally, who approves of us and welcomes us into His arms every.single.time–are the same people who did not have a parent who did that!
Giving freely of your time is similar to being generous with your money. Kids do not need to be the center of the universe. You don’t need to drop everything whenever they ask you to. But there’s such an important balance between allowing your children to feel like the world revolves around them, and on the other hand, always taking the backseat to your phone, or work, or someone else who’s “more important.”
You don’t have to drop everything, but your children should definitely be coming before your phone. They need to know that you consider them important enough that maybe sometimes, you would drop everything to spend time with them. Balance! Just try to find a middle ground in there!
Most importantly, be generous with forgiveness. Sometimes, it’s hard. I’m there right now! But when I think about how often my children have been quick to forgive me, I owe them!
We sometimes forget that our children forgive us without any lectures about how throwing out an, “I’m sorry.” doesn’t just magically fix things. If my child ever said, “I forgive you, but your actions have consequences,” I would flip!
There is a time and a place for a lesson on forgiveness and apologies and reconciliation, but more often, there is a time and a place for, “You’re forgiven.” And that is all. (I’m working on this!)
- Have Fun!
Any time a mom really stands out to me, it’s because of the fun factor. I know moms who are taking their sons on white-water rafting trips; snowmobiling all over the state; fishing; snowboarding and all the “cool mom” stuff that makes me a little envious.
I’m not that mom. I’m deathly afraid of almost all of those activities. I get sea-sick. I get painfully cold. In my mind, I’m amazing at things like snowboarding, but then I remember I have zero depth perception and great balance when I’m not moving.
That does not mean, however, that I can’t be a fun mom! I’m just fun in a different way and you can be too! I play Play-Doh with my kids; have friends over for “art parties,” and act silly all the time! I go shooting clay targets with my sons and score 2 for 10 and they LOVE that they cream me!
We have shaving cream wars and color wars, and run around like banshees in our backyard and make the neighbors all wonder what the commotion is. We are silly at least 80% of the time and a good portion of the time, I’m downright embarrassing.
But at the end of the day, I want my kids to remember me as a “fun mom.” Maybe we couldn’t do all the things they wanted to, but hey! They need to have some new experiences to try out with their kids too!
This life is full of serious. Take some time to be silly and have fun with your kids!
- Be Humble
This might be the most important thing on the list. I need you to hear me. You absolutely will not be a good mom if you are not humble. Why? Because moms mess up nearly as often as kids do.
Parenting is messy. It’s imperfect and sometimes, it’s downright ugly. If we can’t humble ourselves and ask forgiveness from our children, how on Earth can we expect them to be kind, decent human beings?
Have you ever really known an arrogant person that you liked?
Every truly great person I have ever met has had “humble” at the top of their qualities list. You’re no different. If you want to be the best mom, you have to start by being willing to admit that you’re not a perfect mom!
Admit when you’re wrong. Never think you’re better than anyone else. Be real about your shortcomings. You don’t have to be self-deprecating–there’s a BIG difference between humility and self-deprecation. But just be real. You’re never going to be perfect. Never. But you can be AMAZING!
Final Thoughts on Being the Best Mom
Remember, you were already designed to be the best mom for your children. All you have to do is live up to the potential God created in you!
There’s no magic process for it. But it is, indeed, a process. Be as patient with yourself as you are with your children and just keep showing up and putting in the work!
This is not something that God will really just snap His fingers and give you. He wants you to work for it because the only things worth having are the things we work hard for.
Dear Friend, you can do this! You can be a better mom! I can do it too, so join me in working on this together!
