Ever notice when someone says you’re being selfish, what they really mean is “You’re not thinking about ME?”
Yeah. So, while we talk a lot and focus a lot here (and lots of other places, naturally) on what it means to be a mother, how hard it is to be a mother and so on and so forth, somehow, we often seem to miss the real “why” of motherhood.
I know this is pretty obvious, but we’re mothers because we have children, and because we care about them. That’s the long and the short of it—that’s why it’s easy (they’re ours), and that’s why it’s hard (we care).
Now, I know when I say this, many of you will think, “Oh, but kids already think they’re the center of the universe. They need to see that they’re not!” I agree—children, especially those with SAHMs, grow up with someone around who might seem to them to exist only to fulfill their nutritional and entertainment needs.
But when I want to demonstrate, for example, that they’re not the center of the universe by taking excessive time for myself to their detriment, am I really teaching them not “You’re not the center of the universe,” but “I am?”
I don’t know. It’s a hard question to even state, since that’s seldom the problem with me time (usually the problem is that we martyr-mothers don’t take enough). And certainly there are other, better, healthier ways to teach our children to respect and value other people and their time.
What do you think? Are children too much the center of a mother’s universe? Which is the lesser of two evils: focusing too much on our children’s needs or focusing too much on our own? How do you find a balance?
2 replies on “Motherhood: it’s not about you”
Being too much there for your kids is better than not being there at all. I remember middleschool, my mom came to all of my teacher parent confrances. I did really well and had perfect attendence. In highschool my mom didn’t come to any parent teacher confrances and i did average.
As a mother now, I figure I need to be there for my boys, but I also need to back off so that they can find independence. As for focussing on my needs, I figgure that I can sneak some time to focus on me, but I can’t be selfish. Sacrifice is the name of the game.
Parent teacher conferences in high school? Heck, we gave those up in grade school (and my mom was a PTA president and I was valedictorian shrug).
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with your last sentences: we can’t be selfish, and sacrifice is the name of the game.
I just realized that I don’t spend as much time angsting over motherhood (in an abstract sense, anyway; I still spend plenty of time complaining about the specifics of waking up at 6, etc.), and I think it’s because on the one hand, I have something specific and creative to occupy my me time, but on the other, I spend less time worrying about me and my needs.