A sink full of dishes and overflowing laundry hampers day in and day out can be oppressively mind-numbing, but that’s what makes you a mum.
Kate Halim
Mothers do it every January. They vow to make the coming year a better one by making New Year’s resolutions that sadly, only a small percentage of them actually keep.
Making New Year resolutions
But they can actually decide to keep the New Year resolutions that will make them better, happier and healthier moms. Here are some ideas:
Stop comparing
Just stop it already. It’s a complete waste of brain energy. Your children, house, cars, jobs, and all of your family life are yours, and nobody else’s. Everything you have been given and have is what you’re supposed to have.
Call your parents
If you are blessed enough to still have living parents, call them more than once a month. You may be busy, maybe they nag, and maybe they go on and on about your cousins and siblings and you honestly wish they would just learn to text. Call them anyway because when they are gone, your heart will be longing to make that call and hear their voice just one more time.
Stop trying to be your children’s best friend
Your children don’t need to like you 24/7 and it’s okay for them to get disappointed, sad and frustrated. Kids and teens not only need limits; they crave them, so go ahead and set plenty. Set them firm and unwavering, and consider yourself winning at parenting every time you get an eye roll, a foot stomp, and a head shake. They need a role model, not a BFF.
Be a better girlfriend
Start making more time for the female friends in your life. Strong female bonds are vital to both your sanity and your friend’s. Lift them up, encourage their passions and pursuits, listen to their bitching, and be a sounding board for their dreams and goals. Eventually, all your kids will actually move out and you are going to discover find you need them.
Stop fretting over the messes
A sink full of dishes and overflowing laundry hampers day in and day out can be oppressively mind-numbing, but that’s what makes you a mum. Fretting does nothing but raise the blood pressure of the entire household. Fabulously fun and highly functional families often have very messy houses.
Be quieter, respond less
You have heard it before, be slow to anger. You also need to be slow to give advice when you should only be listening, and you need to stop instantly reacting with annoyance to things that truly are the small stuff.
You need to wait an hour or two before you shoot off a rude knee-jerk reaction email reply to someone who doesn’t really deserve it, and you need to stop neglecting to fully digest a tense situation before you go off the deep end and regret the words you spew out.
If someone provokes you, inhale, exhale, pause, then speak or just don’t speak. You would be amazed at what you would hear when you are quiet.