Ten years ago today my son Matthew arrived into the world.\u00a0 As I made the kids a special celebratory pancake breakfast this morning (complete with chocolate milkshakes and a special operatic rendition of Happy Birthday) it dawned on me that it\u2019s also ten years today that I became a mother of four kids. So I thought the occasion of young ‘baby’ moving into the ‘double-digit’ age was a good time to reflect on some of the lessons\u00a0I’ve\u00a0learnt since..<\/p>\n
Lesson #1.<\/em> \u00a0Forget perfect.<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0 Too often we parents beat ourselves up with the guilt-stick, in our efforts to be a perfect parent.\u00a0 But here\u2019s the deal – you are not the perfect parent. Neither were your parents (and see, you turned out okay\u2026 sort of.) \u00a0So don\u2019t even try to be. Focus your efforts on making sure your kids know they are loved, listened to, and don\u2019t need to be perfect for you to \u00a0love them (though you may not always like them.)<\/p>\n Lesson #<\/em><\/b>2.<\/em> \u00a0Laugh often.<\/strong> Every busy home will have many moments of stress when plans for apart, homework gets lost (or stolen\u2026 yes, would you believe there are “strangers” who love to steal math homework?!) and everything descends into chaos. Adding a big dollop of\u00a0humor\u00a0to such occasions can diffuse tension like a magic wand and make all the difference in the world, particularly on those days when the kids want to strangle each other, or you want to strangle them.<\/p>\n Lesson #<\/em><\/b>3.<\/em> \u00a0Encourage their\u00a0individuality\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>If we are going to teach our kids to follow their dreams, we have to first teach them to move beyond fear of criticism and rejection \u2013 it starts with encouraging them to express their individuality and engage with those around them from a place of self-confidence, rather than self-consciousness.\u00a0\u00a0 Of course I\u2019m always drumming into my kids to be polite and respectful (partly because it gets them more invitations to play dates), but as I wrote in Stop Playing Safe<\/a>, if you place too much emphasis on \u2018what others will think\u2019 you set them up to have others opinions run their lives. In the end, it\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0matter what others think as much as what you<\/span><\/i> think about yourself. I don’t care if my kids are the fastest, smartest, or first at anything. I do care (a lot) that they’re confident to express their \u00a0individuality and march to the beat to their own drum.<\/p>\n Lesson #<\/em><\/b>4.<\/em><\/strong> \u00a0Share your struggles & sorrows.<\/b>\u00a0 In the process of writing my last two books I got dozens of rejections letters and emails from publishers. Each came as a blow. \u00a0I’ve also had lots of potential opportunities fall apart.\u00a0 On top of that\u00a0I’ve\u00a0lost my youngest brother (Peter<\/a>)\u00a0to schizophrenia three years ago and my oldest (Frank) became a paraplegic<\/a>\u00a0after a nasty accident two years earlier.\u00a0 Whether personal or professional, I haven\u2019t tried to hide my heartaches or disappointments from my kids but have used all of them as an opportunity to teach them lessons about resilience, about life\u2019s rawness and the importance of acknowledging what upsets us but not letting our struggles and setbacks define us. I see teaching my kids resilience as one of my most important roles as a mum. In today’s competitive, accelerated and anxious world, they will need plenty of it.<\/p>\n Lesson #<\/em><\/b>5.<\/em> \u00a0Apologize.<\/b>\u00a0 As fun-loving as I “try”<\/i> to be, at the end of the day when I\u2019m totally spent \u00a0(or in the middle of relocating home\/state\/country, which I’ve done a lot of – just couldn’t fit ‘3 countries’ into the subject line!), my patience and humor can wear thin. So thin in fact that I have been known to yell at my kids for simply leaving a plate in the sink, rather than putting it in the dishwasher.\u00a0 Yes, bad mother – I should be encouraging any responsibility at all! \u00a0I’ve\u00a0also been known to forget picking up my kids from basketball practice, drop them at the wrong soccer field, forget a special assembly and buy the breakfast cereal\u00a0they’ve\u00a0all told me they hate (major drama!) \u00a0On these occasions,\u00a0I’ve\u00a0learnt there is no better response than to simply fall on my sword, apologize for my failings and ask for forgiveness.\u00a0 It\u2019s my hope that, over time, they will learn that it\u2019s okay to mess up. It\u2019s how we \u2018clean it up\u2019 afterward that matters more. Oh, and not making that same mistake twice.<\/p>\n Lesson #<\/em><\/b>6.<\/em> \u00a0Let them make their<\/em> mistakes (small ones).<\/b>\u00a0 There’s a lot of talk these days about helicopter parents. I’m not one of them. \u00a0That\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0mean I\u2019m not involved in the truly important things, but I have no idea what project\u2019s they have to do, or when they are due.\u00a0 As I tell their teachers, if they get an A, it\u2019s all-them. If they get a D, it\u2019s all-them too. \u00a0Of course sometimes there are tears because I haven\u2019t helped them like “all the other mums who really<\/em> love their kids do,” but it\u2019s my hope that in the long haul, they will be able to manage their lives much better than they would have otherwise. As I said above, I don’t care so much if my kids win the prize for ‘best project’ (which is lucky, they rarely do.) I care that ten years from now they can be discerning in their decisions and willing to put in the effort and take the courageous risks needed to succeed in the bigger game of life.<\/p>\n Lesson #<\/em><\/b>7.<\/em> \u00a0Give Bear Hugs.<\/b>\u00a0 Okay, so my fifteen-year-old son Lachlan\u00a0isn’t\u00a0huge into bear hugs anymore, but I often stop him mid-way out the door to shoot hoops, wrap my arms around him before can escape, and give him a huge bear hug and let him know how proud I am of him. I do that to all my kids. While I don\u2019t always get a big hug back (though often I do), I think that there\u2019s something special about physical touch \u2013 about holding someone in our arms, about being held. And even if they don\u2019t overly enjoy it, I know that it makes them feel loved anyway. While we try to eat together every night, it\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0always happen between business travels and kids sporting commitments. So some days, as we race from one place to another, those few seconds of hugging may be the only time we truly connect. \u00a0Kids learnt to be emotionally and physically affectionate by experiencing it. \u00a0 And in the end of the day, when we look back on our life, our family and what truly matters most, connection is what it\u2019s all about.<\/p>\n Of course I could keep going now that I’m on a roll, but frankly, I’ve got other things to do… like leave my (relatively) tidy office and enter the ‘less than tidy family room’ to remind my precious yet extraordinarily messy cherubs to tidy their room, \u00a0finish their homework and give their mum a hug… or else. Whatever parenting ‘expert’ said bribes and threats are ineffective, or just shouldn’t be used, clearly didn’t have kids. Well not four of them anyway!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ten years ago today my son Matthew arrived into the world. As I made the kids a special celebratory pancake breakfast this morning (complete with chocolate milkshakes and a special operatic rendition of Happy Birthday) it dawned on me that it\u2019s also ten years today that I became a mother of four kids. So I thought I\u2019d take a moment to reflect on some of the lessons I’ve learnt since..
\nLesson # 1. Forget perfect…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[48,368,463,479,488,550,613,625,628,738,812,852,1000,1122,1124,1125],"class_list":["post-6622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parenting","category-live-passionately","tag-affection","tag-family-and-business","tag-helicopter-parents","tag-hugs","tag-imperfect-living","tag-kids","tag-love","tag-marge-warrell","tag-margie-warrell","tag-parenting","tag-raising-kids","tag-resilience","tag-teaching-resilience","tag-working-mom","tag-working-mum","tag-working-parents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/margiewarrell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/margiewarrell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/margiewarrell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/margiewarrell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/margiewarrell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/margiewarrell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/margiewarrell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/margiewarrell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/margiewarrell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/margiewarrell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}