Terrible Mom for Mother’s Day
It’s not a rare occurrence that I find myself wide awake around 3 am worrying, planning, reliving, or otherwise trying to organize my life. Last night was no stranger to me.
The kids woke up around 2:30 am, both needing a diaper change and my month old needing to nurse. Sometimes I am able to fall asleep right next to her while she is still nursing, but tonight I was wide awake.
I was so upset with myself for being a terrible mom. It was even worse that mothers day is only 2 days away. I’m sure all mothers feel this way at some point or another, but in the middle of the night I can’t just call a friend or wake my husband and ask for reassurance, I have to sit there in my cold thoughts.
I have been a little worried about my son for awhile. When I was still working full-time, he went to an in home babysitter only 2 or 3 days a week starting at 10 weeks old. Otherwise, he was with my husband or my mother-in-law. When I came home full-time to run our farm to table business, I still sent him to the sitter 2 days a week so I could get work done around the farm without totting the baby around.
Soon, the sitter no longer met his needs and we decided to bring him home with me.
When my daughter came along, I knew we would keep them both home with me, using co-ops, the library, and other mom friends as a good buffer for socialization and learning. But once we sold the farm in search of a new property states away, moving out of that community, it became harder and harder to go to those events. Add in our traveling and adjusting to be in a new, rather temporary, place, we haven’t found ourselves back into a community to fill those gaps.
Back to 3 AM, I am feeling crushed by the weight of my sons limited vocabulary, his lack of socialization, his inability to identify colors.
“I must be doing something wrong, maybe he needs to go to a sitter, maybe I should call the doctor, maybe…. Maybe… I am just a really bad mom.” I hear these words in my head for a whole hour. Laying in the moon light of my bad decisions and selfishness to keep my baby close.
Finally, I get up to find my phone and do some googling.
“Toddler milestones”
“When to start pre-school”
“Homeschooling 3 year old”
After reading the CDC Guidelines, Indiana’s homeschooling laws, and some quotes from John Holt and Pam Laricchia, I am reminded why I chose to bring my kids home and my goals of homeschooling.
All parents think that their kids are the best at everything, they are fast learners, they are in the 90% percentile for height, weight, head size, IQ, potty training, sleep training.
“My 2 year old can tell time”
“My kid started walking at 9 months”
“Mine hung the moon”
It’s no wonder I feel like my kid is “behind”.
It turns out, he’s average.
It’s 4 am now and I am beaming with the reality that my kids aren’t forced to sit still, be quiet, memorize a piece of arbitrarily based information.
My son will be 3 in just a few days. He understands when someone is hurt. He pees and poops in the potty most of the time. He can describe with hand gestures what he needs. He loves dinosaurs and playing with tractors. He can’t count to 5 or say “I love you”.
In a world where excellence is the baseline, its easy to forget what being a kid is really about. I won’t be buying the workbooks or paying for the pre-pre-school courses. I won’t sit with him on the floor and demand he recite the alphabet to me.
I may be a terrible mother, but my sweet, sensitive baby boy is a great, average kid!!
LOVE, LIVV
