The Best Thing My Mom Did as a Parent

No YOU’RE crying.
In reading this article as a new mom, I often worry about how to guide and speak with my daughter to give her a safe haven and solid foundation, and so thankful my mom & dad did that for me.
Thank you

I cannot wait to be a Mom like this one day. I didn’t have this experience of unconditional acceptance and love that was felt in my bones and knowing that is all I ever wanted, I cannot wait to give that to a child.

I just came across this post linked from another one, and it is so meaningful to me. I remember one time I had to get a root canal and 11 cavities filled (I have NO idea how this happened, I am the most diligent flosser and tooth brusher I know, but I just have soft teeth I guess? Or it was an overenthusiastic dentist, I found a new dentist after this incident). I have always been super frugal and I grew up knowing that cavities were expensive to fill, so I felt heartbroken that this was about to be so expensive for my parents. Kind of a weird thing to be sad about, but I felt so so bad. I texted my mom “Will you still love me?” after I got the news from the dentist and she replied immediately with “There is very little you could do to make me not love you. In fact, I can’t think of anything.” It made me cry when I saw it and I’m getting teary thinking about it again now. I’ve always held her message near to my heart. Her love is the best gift I have.

When I was young my Dad would always tell me nothing’s impossible. One day probably when i was like 7-10, I asked can you build a ladder to to the Moon? He said if you want to you could. It will be a lot of work, but you can!

I was like WOW!

Some 30 years later, that popped in my head, I understood nothing was impossible as I was dealing with life in General, then the Moon came back to me.

I realized you actually could do it. It would probably take the help of everyone on the planet, a thousand years or more to construct, and might only touch for a second. It’s not impossible, just because it’s never been done.

So in a Nut Shell, my children know that nothing they want to do is impossible, thanks to my Dad.

Scot

My mom, she’s not an affectionate person. She’s very strict when it comes to me and was quick on punishment. Growing up, I resented her for that and for so many times I wished she wasn’t my mother. While my friends were out playing, I wasn’t allowed to go out and had to do a lot of household chores.
Now that I’m a mother myself, I am grateful for all those times that I was washing the dishes and cleaning our house, the 6PM curfew and the punishment. Being an adult, you learned that sometimes life can be difficult and if not for your resilience and independence it may be hard for you to deal with the problems. But having the kind of upbringing that I had, I understood early on that I have to stand for myself and not all times my parents will be by my side. And this had helped me a lot in every aspect of my life. Mistakes were made of course, but I learned to deal and accept the consequence and then move forward. So mom, thank you.

Whenever I was worried about something my mom would say “Is there anything you can do to ease the worry? If so, act. If there isn’t anything you can do, there’s no use worrying.”

Growing up the only girl in a family of six, I was held to a different standard. My mom was unfair, distrusting, and mean. Still is. In high school she started saying to me “watch your reputation” which was more of a threat than actual guidance.

I now have two girls and I never want them to feel guilt or less-than because of me. The mantra I repeat to them is “you are smart and you are brave”. And I tell them I love them a hundred times a day!

We always say “Put your hand up if you’ve got the best (Mummy/Daddy/Sister/Nanna etc) in the World” It normally brings absolute squeals of delight and little hands shooting up to declare their love and affection for family members. My toddler daughter will often say “put your hand up if you have the best mummy” when I’m doing something routine (to me) like making her a snack. She’ll then raise her own hand and smile so broadly. Its been our families little way of showing we appreciate each other and has been an easy way to introduce gratitude. Our girls know that, to us, they really are the best.

My mom is quite a character and a hardcore feminist, the woman has many catchphrases. She and my dad also have many friends who are in same sex relationships, as a child I never even realized same-sex marriages were any different than heterosexual marriages. When I was about 7 or 8 I remember hearing a friend use the word gay as if it was something negative for the first time, I was just shocked! I went home that day and asked my mom about her best friend and his partner, “what were they” and she said they were “a family just like us, but they both decided to replace the little girls for cats”. I’m 28 years old and I wonder how the world would be today if everyone else had been raised in an environment where equality and inclusion are norm, just like I did.

I am a worrier and have been since I was young. Worry gave me stomachaches and made it feel impossible to cope when bad things (or things I perceived as bad) happened. My mum had some perspective-giving words that I still use to balance myself today. When the going got tough, she asked me, “will this matter in a month? Will this matter in a year? Will this matter in 10 years?” If the answer was no (and it almost always was), it became much easier to let the worry go.

My mother always said (and actually still says) the same thing to me, and whenever I was worried about something, whether it was an upcoming test or a difficult decision or health problem, she would remind me “no matter what happens, at the end of it, you will still be you, and I will still be me, and we will still love each other.” Because of those wonderful sentiments, I have always felt like I have a safety net. When you feel so completely safe and loved, how bad can anything be?

Now I tell my 5 year old every night before bed (and pretty much whenever I look at him) “I love you with all my heart, forever and ever, no matter what.” And he likes to think of silly situations like “even if I turned into a monkey?” or “even if I stole the moon?”

What could possibly be better than being someone’s safety net? I relish it so completely.

My husband started telling my daughter “I will always love you and I will always be here for you, no matter what”. It has become our nightly ritual complete with a musical and a rap adaptation. It’s all very silly and fun at night time, but when my daughter is starting to let that shame cloud settle in or is nervous about getting in trouble, we can simply say, “remember our words?” and she’ll say “no matter what”. It feels like such a safety blanket. My husband and I love it so much that after date night and a bottle of wine we found ourselves at a tattoo parlor getting it inked on permanently. We plan to take each of our kids when they are 18 to do the same.

I remember knowing so deeply that I was loved and would always be welcome home, no matter what. I’m not a parent, but I have started making a point to tell my nieces and nephews how much I love them, and the other day I asked my 3yo nephew, “I sure do love you, you know that?” and his sweet little response “Yeah” just about melted my heart! I hope that one day they are as sure of my love for them and can come to me with anything.

The best comment I’ve ever heard was from a friend’s mom. She said, “You can never be sorry for anything done out of love.”

This is such a powerful statement, especially to be verbalized over and over and over again. I’m 32 on Monday and still have anxiety about how I spend the holidays (how I allocate my time between my family and my in-laws) and would love that refrain in my head. I know it’s absolutely true, but I still really really worry about letting my parents down or disappointing them. And that’s not really fair.

I vote for an post about the struggles of parenting. Because yes, we all love our kids and try our very best but sometimes it I seem hard, or the days seem never ending.
That isn’t bad parenting but sometimes, reading only posts about loving your kids etc. I feel worse because yes I love my kids most in this world, but I feel like I’m the only parent who sometimes yells or is cranky or just plane fed up with yet another discussion about why we use toiletpaper.
Please, I vote for more ‘real’ posts on parenting.

My dad would always say, “I’m so grateful that I get to be your dad!” We never doubted that he loved us, but he had a lot of personal struggles that quite negatively impacted our family and ultimately ended my parent’s marriage. He’s worked really hard over the last decade to rebuild relationships with me and my brothers. He’s still telling us how grateful and lucky he is to be our dad and it just means so much to me now. It is so sincere and now that I’m a parent I can really relate to the sentiment. We truly are the lucky ones to get the chance to parent these beautiful little humans.

I read this yesterday and went straight home to tell my 6yo. We say I love you SO much and are very outwardly affectionate and I KNOW my girls know our love, but when I said, “Did you know there’s nothing you could ever do that would make me not love you?” My daughter replied, “No. Really? Nothing?” Ugh. Stomach punch that reached my soul. Thank you, Joanna. That one add’al sentiment is priceless parenting advice.

I love this soooo much. There was no one thing my mom said all the time, but she DID tuck my brother and me and bed every night and brought us a glass of water (until we went off to college!). It was our time to talk about the day, about random things that popped into our heads, whatever. She was (and is) one of my best friends.

With my own kids, I started randomly saying “Guess what? I love you!” when they were teeny toddlers…it always made them laugh as I would do it at weird times (in the car, while watching a show, in the middle of dinner). Now the minute I start any sentence with “guess” they immediately yell out “you love us!” They are in the pre-teen years now and I am getting misty eyed just thinking about how fast those early years went…I hope I have done enough to let them know I will always be a safe person to come to and that I will ALWAYS be their biggest champion.

Whenever we would say “that’s not fair!” my mom would reply “ya well life’s not fair and the sooner you figure that out the better off you’ll be” it’s a bit pessimistic; however, it helped me realize that not everything in life works out equally or in your favour all the time.