Mum…You’re doing great!

“Train up a child in the way he should go [teaching him to seek God’s wisdom and will for his abilities and talents], Even when he is old he will not depart from it.” PROVERBS 22:6 AMP

In my naivity I figured that children who were naughty were so, because they weren’t given boundaries and discipline.

How wrong I was.

I’ve discovered every child is different and what works with one doesn’t necessarily work with the other. It’s not like you’re given a handbook with your model of child.

It’s a challenge. You have got to discover what makes your child tick. What discipline works, what doesn’t. It’s a voyage of discovery.

In doing so you can truly doubt your own parenting skills. Other parents kids can look like angels compared to yours and we can so easily question, “what am I doing wrong?”

Then there are the days you lose it. Your patience flies out the window along with your mind and your emotions take over.

I remember sitting in a mother and toddler group and saying to one of the mum’s who had just asked me how I was.

“I completely lost it this morning.” I responded. I felt like such a bad mum.

I never forgot her reaction.

“Just the once?” She said, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

She made me feel so much better. It was reassuring to me to know I wasn’t the only one in the room that had lost their patience with their children.

We are human, we’re not perfect. We are all a work in progress and children happen to help chip those rough edges off our character.

“Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:4 NIV

So whether you’re a mum of under 5s, primary, teenagers or grown up children I just want to say, don’t be too hard on yourself, you’re doing great!

Let me finish with this incredible video of what mum’s think of themselves compared to what their kids think of them.

I warn you, you may need a tissue.

https://vimeo.com/66058153?ref=em-v-share