Beyond Da Mom

It's easy to become that mom -- the one that makes us cringe as she stomps along the sidelines of the soccer game or pounds on the glass at the hockey game, screaming at her kid to, "Score!  Score!  Score!"  Or we become that mom who berates her daughter for not throwing a standing tuck or for failing to get all A's.  Becoming that mom starts slowly.  We want to encourage our children to do their best... but then the encouragement rounds the corner and heads over the hill to pushing our children mentally, to shouting, threats and bribery.  It also inevitably ends up in frustration for both mom and child.

How do you avoid becoming that mom -- the one who is so over-involved in her child's life that she can't see that she is doing more harm than good?  You step back and realize that you are not your child.  You get a life (sounds harsh, but meant in all kindness).  You realize that you can't expect absolute perfection from your child when you, yourself, aren't perfect.  And you realize that your main goal in life as a mother is to raise a child that can take care of himself or herself.

And as scary as it sounds, to raise children that can take care of themselves means allowing them to fail once in awhile.  Solving all of a child's problem in the long run does more harm than good.  He will never learn how to cope with failure, which will happen as certainly as death someday.  At least if it happens now, you can walk him through the pain and the reasons why failure happens.  It is actually a much better present to give a child than to buy her a toy to temporarily soothe the pain.