"See, I Am A Good Mom!"
In my first few years of parenting, I was blessed with a little girl who did everything right on time. By that, I mean that all of her developmental milestones were met when, and sometimes before, they “should” be. She crawled at eight months, started talking at ten, walked two days before her first birthday and generally gave me ample opportunities to capture videos for the grandparents to show them what she was up to, how she was growing so well.
One of my favorite videos is of a 17-month-old Harper and her brand new baby brother, Cannon. He is lying on a boppy pillow, the same pink one with white polka dots Harper spent her early days lounging on, and she walks up to him to gently pull his ankles and say “Come on brother, come on!” I sent this video to the grandparents, and eventually shared it on social media, too. I was so proud of her talking at such an early age, her tenderness and immediate bond with her little brother, just her in general.
Seven years and five kids later, I look back on this collection of milestone moments I have for my firstborn, and I know two things about myself: first, my staunch defiance that all of my children would have the same care given toward their “baby book” was really a precious thought, but that is all it was because no one else even has a baby book. Second, I am sure there were pure motives in this desire to remember, to keep friends and relatives far away updated, to proudly share my daughter with people who cared about both of us; but what I can also see so clearly in the collection of my new mom camera roll is a roaring insecurity. With every milestone met and every video shared and every letter board listing all she was doing at every stage, I know there was a big part of my heart sharing it all with the world to say “Look at her! See, I am a good mom!”
There’s always going to be this tension in motherhood: the tendency to make my children’s development and achievements a direct reflection of my parenting. In those first few years, every time my daughter did something well, it was something I celebrated and was proud of, but if I am honest, it was also a sign that we, both of us, were doing ok. When you are brand new at something, of course you are insecure about it—whether it is a new job or a new school or any new role. I wanted to be a good mom, and I wanted noble, healthy things for my children. But there was also a part of me that craved being seen in those things; that needed to be seen in them, for others to equate her “good” growth with my “good” parenting. So I shared and talked about my daughter freely and easily for both of those reasons, squelching any insecurity in the back of my mind that maybe I wasn’t up to snuff.
It was my good girl’s first real public meltdown that started to challenge my own parenting assessment, but the next 18 months of a disposition that I did not know how to parent never let up on that challenge. Then God gave us a little boy who stopped meeting the same developmental milestones I was proudly sharing with the world less than two years earlier; the ones that I used to affirm that I was a good mom who was doing a good job were now the reason for a fear and insecurity that was crippling me.
This, friends, is a truly terrible way to parent, and it is a matter of time before it lets you down. As Paul Tripp says, “God didn’t give you your children to build your reputation but to publicly proclaim his.”*
It has taken me a lot of years and a handful of kids, but there is some growth. This need to be seen as a good mom based on her good kids has gotten smaller, even if only a little bit. Our fourth baby was not even sitting up at nearly eight months old, her torso muscles still taking their time to grow in strength and confidence that they could hold her little body up. The third didn’t walk until he was 16 months old, seven full months later than his older brother did. But that same older brother never did pick up on his sister’s communication aptitude—it is still a challenge for him to speak at all at five years old. The first baby had no problems with talking to us—she still doesn’t—but I think she smiled at others five times the entire first year of her life, and our fifth and final baby smiles big, happy, engaging smiles whenever anybody looks at him.
And you know what? They have the same parents, and have thus far spent their young years with the same love and effort, with a firm commitment to reading books and limiting screen time (you know, as much as we can), with setting boundaries and consistent discipline, and with a lot of talking about Jesus, who we all need in every way. And still, despite my desire for my kids to walk into the world as a billboard for the nice job I have done caring for and raising them, they all have strengths, they all have weaknesses, they all have sin.
They all have two parents with those same things, so it should have clicked much earlier for me that humility was going to be a safer road to navigate motherhood with than pride. I still cheer wildly with new achievements, but my confidence comes less from how early or how well my children do things and more from how much I trust God with them: their growth, their hearts, their whole lives.
There’s a common adage that “Good moms raise good kids,” and there is a lot of truth to that. Many good kids are the product of consistent, intentional parenting. The nature versus nurture debate is still very much that, a debate with evidence on both sides. So it’s not that the saying is untrue, it’s just that it is incomplete. Because good moms also raise very difficult kids. They raise bright kids who catch on to things quickly, and kids that work hard but are slower to understand. They raise strong kids and timid kids, early readers and late readers, social butterflies and can’t-stand-crowds, very healthy and always sick, sports phenoms and afraid of the ball kids.
Good moms raise all kinds of children.
Photo by Lottie Caiella