All About Mothers

Since Mother’s Day is coming up, I thought I would make the posts from now until then “all about mothers.”

To start, I am going to tell a little story from my own personal experience.

After I had my second child, life didn’t seem like it could get any harder…………until I had number three.
Having three children, 3 and under was a huge challenge for me. I was running a million miles an hour and I felt like I could NEVER catch up with everything that needed to be done in (and outside) my house. I was a wreck to say the least.

Not only was I not keeping my house under control, but I was not keeping my temper under control. I was becoming that mom that I vowed I would NEVER become.
I was yelling, getting upset over the SMALLEST things and found myself exhausted by the end of the day. I just couldn’t understand why I wasn’t able to get my kids to do what I wanted them to do.

As I desperately prayed to my Heavenly Father for help to become more patient and loving with my children I was given an answer that, at first, was hard for me to understand.
Heavenly Father helped me understand that it had NOTHING to do with me being more patient with my children, but rather being more patient and loving toward myself.

I was working on some goals at the time that I was having a HARD time living up to. (And I understood later that they were goals that were too much for me at that stage of my life) I was trying to take on everything that came my way. I was so hard on myself when I made ANY mistakes. I got into the BAD habit of picking myself apart.

And because I was doing these things to myself, I was taking my frustrations out on my children.
On the days when I was harder on myself, I was harder on my children. If my children made ANY little mistake, I treated them like I was treating myself when I made mistakes.
Because of the insight I received from a loving heavenly Father, I was able to point to the real problem and work HARD on correcting some bad habits I had gotten myself into.

It involved:

1.) Taking some time in the morning to write down at LEAST ten things I liked about myself.
2.) Setting REASONABLE goals. I learned to stop setting myself up for failure.
3.) Being patient with myself. Making mistakes will only be “bad” if I don’t learn from them or do all that I can to correct the mistake.
4.) Taking some time for ME. As a mother, I know that when my kids are on the grumpy side, they are most likely tired and need to take a nap. Well, sometimes mommy is “grumpy” and needs a nap. I had to learn that I am not neglecting my children if I pop in a video and take a little nap now and then.
5.) Learning the importance of staying healthy, fit and strong.
6.) Learning to STOP comparing myself to other mom’s. This one is hard NOT to do. I think we are prone to compare our weaknesses with other people’s strengths and that just isn’t fair. Once I learned to just do my own thing and do it the best that I could, it took a HUGE weight off of my shoulders. It allowed me to be…….ME. (And be okay with that)
7.) Realizing that I don’t have to do this alone.
8.) Learning to laugh a little more.
9.) Strengthening my relationship with my Heavenly Father on a DAILY basis has been the biggest strength to me as a mother. When we understand God’s love and patience toward us, we are not only better able to have it for ourselves, but for our children.


Throughout this week, I will be going over some of these steps and what I have learned from working on them.

Being a mom is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. (Besides being married to a man that treats me like a queen)

I can now say that these are no longer “survival years” for me. (Years I look back on and wonder how I made it alive)

By learning to be more patient and kind with ourselves, we will see a huge difference in our level of patience and kindness toward our children.