Marsha Walker
Everyone loves a good mom enabler to tell us "it's okay, just do the best you can. Parent the way that feels best for you".
“Mind your own motherhood” is the newest slang being dished out by mom bloggers on the Internet.
Well, I hope we're passing on that kind of grace to our kids.
Oh wait, nope we're not. While we are busy feeling sorry for ourselves, while we convince ourselves that best practices and social pressures are in fact dangerous to our mental health, we simultaneously continue to force our kids into conforming regardless of how damaging it is emotionally.
We hate when the older generation of moms tell us to suck it up and get on with life, yet we use that very tactic with our kids. "We survived and so will they," we say. We got licks and we're okay. Corporal punishment worked for us. Our parents got divorced and we survived. Yes, SEA was hard, but we didn't die.
We spew out all kinds of so-called motivating speeches when it comes to our kids, but as for parenting...
When you know better, you do better. HYPOCRISY!!!!!
When did parenting become synonymous with hypocrisy?
When did we start thinking that our mental needs trump those of our children? When did we begin thinking that self-care, self-preservation, and self-love was reserved only for adults?
Just imagine if our children adopted the whole "mind my own childhood” attitude? Personally, of course, I think that would be glorious but that would mean most of our children would ditch school as we know it. I am guessing near 90 per cent of them will choose to learn to earn money versus Pythagorean Theorem. Most girls won't endure a headache that comes from pulling back their hair way too tightly and way too neatly, and the boys will finally get to choose to play in the dirt without fear of dirtying their uniforms.
What would their lives look like if we afforded them the opportunity to discuss the way they see their lives panning out?
I can hear it now, "they're too young to know better". Except that we have entire movements that tell moms it's okay not to breastfeed, kids survive just fine, and your mental health is way more important. We ignore the scientific research because we would rather comfort ourselves with lies over equipping ourselves to simply make it happen and then we use the ultimate cop-out that our mental health is at risk.
Well let me tell you, so too are our children. Cutting is happening in schools, why do you think? Why are we seeing more and more bullying?
Our children are crying out for help and we are too busy self-loving and self-caring to notice the hypocrisy of it all.
To end, I pray that as we mind our own motherhood we allow the same opportunity to our children. Oh, what a wonderful world it would be if they could only just be kids.