Five Confessions of a Real Life Mom

Let’s be real, we all make mistakes. I don’t care if your last child birthday party would have qualified you for Mom of the Year at the Pinterest Party-Throwing Awards, you have done something in your career of mothering that made you shake your head at yourself and look around to be sure no one noticed.

I do those kinds of things every single day it seems.

Writing a post for Mother’s Day was something I had been looking forward to, but here it is, two days after the day and I am just getting to it. The last two weeks have been nothing short of horrendous. Our son’s behavior disorders have begun rearing their ugly head at school so he has had a bad note in his planner almost every day. I have had a phone conference with his principal. He had a write up on the bus. Our daughter had strep throat and a 103.7 fever while my husband was out of state on business. I have seriously had to reevaluate whether or not I am horribly failing my kids. Celebrating Mother’s Day just seemed inappropriate.

So, instead I decided to tell you how I mess up. This is the ugly truth about motherhood for me. I hope some of you share some of this fallibility, but if I am alone in this uphill battle, then so be it. I feel sure at least one of my kids will end up in therapy because of me, but doesn’t that mean I did something right?

Here are the top five (of many, I’m sure) confessions of a real mom:

5. Sometimes My Kids Use Dirty Dishes- If I am being totally honest, my one year old daughter has eaten more food off of the floor than I care to count. This morning, I rinsed out a sippy cup of water to send with her to school because I just plain didn’t have time to wash it. I was up all night with a migraine headache so the dishes just didn’t get done. So, yes, mom fail. My kid will be drinking remnants of last night’s dinner with her lunch today.

4. I Forget Bath Times-At the risk of sounding like Adam Sandler in Big Daddy, I may have had the smelly kid in class. It isn’t an intentional lack of parenting skills. This is survival mode. Our son has karate twice a week, soccer twice a week, and occupational therapy once a week. That is on top of homework and whatever else our family has going on. I am sure to at least hose his hind end off in the yard after soccer practice, but good grief, one week I completely forgot to bathe our baby girl for four days in a row. FOUR DAYS!

I know, I know. Get your Mom of the Year nomination cards ready. I don’t know how you moms of several kids or single             parents do this everyday and manage not to look like a train hit you in the mornings. Just this morning I guarantee I look           like I wrestled a bear on my way in and I had a husband to help me prep the kiddos for school.

3. I Lie to My Kids-Full disclosure; I am going to have some real explaining to do when my five-year-old son realizes that all moms don’t actually have eyes in the back of their heads. This weekend when I couldn’t turn around to see whatever shenanigans he insisted I watch in the back seat, he said with full confidence, “Okay, well can you just turn on your back eyes and watch me?”

Y’all I can’t help it. Sometimes it is easier to tell my kid that chocolate milk comes from brown cows and white milk comes       from white ones instead of dodging the barrage of questioning that will follow when I tell him the truth. He will understand       one day, right?

2. I Cry More Than I Care to Admit-In the bathroom, in bed when I can’t sleep, or in the car on my way to work; I cry a lot these days. Parenting at all is a messy, thankless job; parenting a child with behavior disorders is a job that should come with a hardhat and hazmat suit.

There are many mornings where I have already been hit, spit on, screamed at, and told how much I am hated all before             7am so, yes, I cry on my way to work sometimes. Many days it feels like that is all I have left and if I don’t get it out in a             safe place where I won’t feel judged by anyone else, then I might be able to make it through the work day.

There have been countless (and I mean countless) times where I have gone in the bathroom, leaned against the wall, and        slid down, hugging my knees and sobbing into my legs so my husband can’t hear and my kids who are peering at me                under the door at me can’t see my tears. Sometimes I am crying because I am disappointed in myself, sometimes I cry            because I am so frustrated with my son, other times I cry because I feel like it is all of the emotions I have pushed down for      weeks and they just came bubbling up like hot lava and I can’t stop them.

Regardless of the reason, this is my honest place and that is the truth. I cry a lot these days.

1. I Don’t Always Make The Best Decisions-When you raise tiny humans, you are tasked with about a billion decisions a day. What toothpaste is the best to use? What age is really when you should take them to the dentist? Do chocolate pop tarts qualify as a breakfast food? Does it make me a bad mom that the teenager working the Chick-fil-a drive through knows me by name?

When you are bringing up a child with behavior disorders, your decision list lengthens by miles. What specialist is most             qualified? Will therapy help my child’s behaviors? Can we afford therapy and medication? Should we be medicating at all?         Will the lady in the check out line actually call CPS when my son is having a Mach 5 meltdown because I am ignoring his           screaming and kicking over not getting to choose the bananas?

You see the difference? I am going to mess up, people. It is inevitable. These kinds of decisions are what keep me up at            night. This is what causes stress in marriages. This is why I drink Coke instead of water sometimes. It is why I have a                hidden stash of dark chocolate so no one gets punched. This is why I have chosen to nap instead of jog and why the 20            pounds I had worked so hard to shed after baby number two has found its way back to my ever widening hips. I mean, this      is real life, in the trenches, not made for the faint of heart mothering.

So, mamas, trust me. There is always someone out there who is worse off than you. If you are raising a “normal” child, or single parenting, or foster momming, or bringing up a child with disabilities, or struggling with infertility, I praise you and I pray for you. Keep doing what you are doing. Sure, we may make a wrong choice or even be the reason our kid wears black nail polish one day, but we are human. We are doing the best we can and that is the best we can offer.

Keep it up! We are all in this fight together!

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