Mum, are you burning out trying to be all things to your children?

Hi I’m Laurel Smith, President of MOPS, Mothers of PreSchoolers ...with an important warning here in MUMSense.

Damage is done by motherhood myths. Have you seen fridge magnets and posters stating: “God could not be everywhere, so he made mothers.” Such a sentiment is nice, but it is also dangerous. It builds the expectation that good mothers are meant to be all things to small people.

The truth is that each of us will mother our own children, in our own way. We will be important to our little ones but we won’t be all things to them. We each have different God-given personalities and a history of different life experiences that not only shape who we are but also shape our unique style of parenting.

Instead of getting tangled up in the myth that we should all fit the same good-mum mould, real mums embrace their uniqueness. They know who they are and accept who they are, so they can be who they are.

As Charles Swindoll writes, “I have begun to realise that secure, mature people are best described in fifteen words. They know who they are…they like who they are. They are who they are. They are real.”

In truth, real mums can’t be all things to anyone. And they don’t kill themselves trying.

That kind of encouragement is available to every mother of a pre-school age child at a nearby MOPS Group.