I’ve always wanted to be a mom. From playing with baby cousins as almost a baby myself to babysitting at 13 to playing with dolls probably way longer than my friends, I always loved babies. Even as a teenager, I was steadfast in telling my friends that even if I never found a husband, I would do it myself!
Luckily, I ended up with an amazing husband and father, so I have a partner through this journey. But when I dreamed about being a mom, I always thought about what kind of mom I would be. I would want to be just like my own mom: patient, loving, and crafty. And while I try to hit the mark, like anyone else, sometimes I miss.
But what I have found most interesting, especially as my children get older, is that I’m not just one type of mom. Some of my mom traits are consistent, like being loving. We are professional snugglers in my house. We’re always hugging, snuggling, and saying, “I love you.” I take that part of my job very seriously.
Even when we’re not together, I want my kids to feel warm inside when they think of me.
No matter how hard their day is or how nervous they are about anything, I want them to think of me telling them I love them 500 times a day. I hope that helps give them some extra bravery for whatever the day may bring.
But in my almost 13th year of parenthood, I’m learning that as our kids grow and change, their needs change.
And I don’t just mean what food they want to eat, what clothes they want to wear, or what lip gloss they need to buy. I mean their needs from us. And it makes me think: What do they need from me? What mom do they need me to be today? Because let me tell you, it isn’t always the same.
My younger daughter started playing cello this year. She’s 8 years old, and she struggles in school. I like to explain it as her brain takes an extra beat to catch up. She needs extra time to figure things out. So when she said she wanted to be a part of strings and play cello, I was excited for her but also concerned.
Will the strings teacher understand her needs? Can you have an extra moment to catch up when playing with a group? Of course, I wanted her to try, and up until right now, her big concert, I thought it was all going great. However, all that changed when I picked her up from school a few weeks ago, and she was so upset.
Everyone was already advanced to playing with the bow, and she was still plucking the strings. She hadn’t caught up, and now she was behind. Would she be able to play with the rest of the class? Would she be the only one plucking? This was her fear (and mine!), and she was so scared.
So I asked myself, what kind of mom did she need then? She needed a comforting, loving, and caring mom. She needed a positive, optimistic mom. And so that’s who I was.
I cheered her on. I told her I knew she could do it! And that mom worked for a while. But yesterday, as we grabbed her cello to bring to school for practice, she said, “I can’t do this. It’s too hard. I want to quit.”
We went back and forth for a bit, and then she didn’t need comfort; she needed tough love, and she needed it now. I told her she could not just quit her responsibility. The rest of her group needed her, and she needed to try. If she kept going to practice and couldn’t play the right notes, we could talk to her teacher together, but she could not quit without trying. Not the snuggly, loving, hug-of-a-human mom she was used to. But she did it. She left school that afternoon, and I received a note from her teacher saying they would work together and she would be ready for the show!
That’s just one tiny example of how I’ve learned to shift my parenting depending on my kids’ needs. Sometimes, they need to be babied, and sometimes, they need to hear the hard truth. They can’t turn away from uncomfortable situations, and they can’t give up because it seems too hard.
Our job as parents is to make them feel loved and supported, but we also need to raise good humans so that they’re ready when they go out in the world.
So, at each age and stage, I’ll always be their mom. I’ll always love and protect them, even on the hardest of days. But I’ll also look at the situations that arise from a distance and have to decide, “What kind of mom do they need today?”
