Today I took three of my kids out to run an errand with me. My older kids were at school, so it was the three-year-old, the two-year-old and the one-year-old that went with me to pick up basketball shoes for my older boys. As I was buckling them into their carseats I tried to remember the last time I had taken the three of them to run an errand. . . and that’s when I realized it may never have happened before today.
I have six kids. Somewhere around kid number four (when my oldest was 5), I stopped trying to do all the things. “Simplify” became my life motto. It isn’t that my kids couldn’t behave themselves if I took them out and about. It isn’t that they didn’t enjoy occasional outings. It was just that I found I was becoming a woman I didn’t like. And having a mom you know loves you is more important than attending library story time.
Some of you moms LOVE being out. It energizes you. It gives structure and purpose to your day. You feel like your life has meaning if you’ve put on shoes and run around town a bit. But there are those of us who do not find public parenting to be an enjoyable act. We get grumpy with our kids and we want a nap when we get home. We get actual literal headaches from the stress of trying to hold it together while wandering the aisles of Target with whiney kids.
We get exhausted by having to help a toddler use a grocery store bathroom (I didn’t even know grocery stores HAD bathrooms until I had a toddler who saw public restrooms as some kind of tourism opportunity) while holding a baby and trying to keep a preschooler from unrolling the toilet paper. When we’re exhausted we huff and roll our eyes and say unhelpful things like, “Are you kidding me? Remember when I asked if you needed to potty AT HOME? Can’t Mommy even pick up MILK and BREAD without having to wipe someone’s bottom?” I do not like that woman I become and at some point in my parenting journey I decided to limit her ability to damage my kids.
This is my bottomline: I don’t want to yell at my kids. I don’t want to shame them in public. I want them to feel totally confident that they are loved and treasured. This is not the kind of mom I was being at library story time or at the children’s museum or in the park or at the McDonald’s Playland. But I can be that kind of mom at home. I can give my kids freedom to play and make mistakes and use the bathroom without it becoming major family drama. I actually love being in my home where we can do puzzles and have dance parties and make messes and sing and wrestle and read stories on the couch. I’m not brooding about being stuck in the house with these kids, I truly enjoy it. Over the years I have become better at handling the stress of running around town with a toddler, a preschooler and a baby, but I’ve also learned to prioritize when it’s worth adding that stress into my life and when we’re better off at home.
I’m not saying my kids don’t leave the house. We have set scheduled activities. We have friends come over. They have playdates. My husband enjoys spontaneous fun with the kids and will take them wherever, whenever. They aren’t starved for interactions with other humans or intellectually stimulating activities. We’ve just learned how to do that in ways that work for our family.
Having lots of kids means you get lots of chances to figure out what works for you and for them. You figure out what boundaries you have. You become less stressed when you’re out and about and you also become less stressed about feeling like to be a good mom you HAVE to be out and about. When we go out now, I gear up for it. I pre teach them about appropriate behavior for wherever we’re going. I set clear expectations. I learn how to minimize my own stress by bringing a list of what we need or planning a reward ahead of time for myself when it’s all done. We enjoy ourselves when we make the effort to go exploring, but we also don’t do that very often.
The healthy moment for me came when I stopped feeling the pressure to create all these magical experiences for my kids. If I can feel confident that I’m doing the right thing for them even by staying home, I can stop feeling judgmental or envious of my friends with different capacities and start being supportive. It is now possible for me to see a sweet picture of a mom and her little ones at the zoo without immediately feeling guilty about how infrequently I do those things with my kids. I can be impressed that a mom is doing a Mommy and Me art class without berating myself. I can see a mom running errands with a baby I’m pretty sure should be napping at this time of day without being irritated that other people aren’t as particular about schedules as I am. I don’t have to feel pressured into attending some event or class or party every other mom is going to with their kids if I know it wouldn’t be good for us. And I can be REALLY proud of myself when I venture out into the big, wide world and everything goes as planned. . . or it doesn’t go as planned, but I stayed calm.
I grew up in a large family and I knew it was logistically tough and expensive for us to go somewhere all together. When I think about my own childhood, I don’t have a lot of memories of dramatic, magical experiences. What I remember was an overwhelming feeling of safety and being valued and loved. I had lots of free time to pick my own activities and I felt free to explore my home, my yard, and my neighborhood. That’s the gift I want for my kids. And I want to give myself the gift of accepting my own limitations when it comes to outside activities. It’s amazing how therapeutic getting groceries can feel when you do it by yourself at 9 p.m. It’s not wrong for me to handle those activities in ways that keep my sanity intact. When people look at my large family of young kids and ask, “How do you do it?” I think the most accurate answer would be, “I don’t.” If it doesn’t involve feeding, dressing, or loving my little ones, I’ve learned to scale back and prioritize. Parenting a large family isn’t that hard if you remember what parenting is really all about. I’m focused on raising healthy (emotionally, physically, spiritually) people, not on just creating a storybook life for them or for myself.
For my fellow Homebody Moms, give yourself some grace. Embrace your stay-at-home life. Find ways to stretch yourself when it’s important. Cheer on your adventurous friends and ask them for tips when you’re heading out (they know where the cleanest bathrooms are at the zoo and which grocery stores give out free cookies). Create opportunities for one-on-one interactions with your kids when you go out instead of trying to take a whole crew at once. Don’t feel like in order to be a “good mom” you have to participate in every activity offered. Remember that this is a season and one day you’ll be able to run errands without little ones to wrangle.
2 Comments
Leave a reply →