MamaBlogga

Last week, I wrote about the three things that help me to be a better mother: patience, focus and faith. The first comment I received on that post struck a chord with me when I read:

I’m not the best at sustained “baby playing” . . .

I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about my mothering skills; I’m absolutely not the best at sustained baby play either! I can tickle him and chase him for a little while, but it’s never long before I’m wondering what’s on television and he’s climbing over the back of the couch again.

On that note, I’m a bit worried about the coming cold weather. I’m sure we’ll somehow manage to fill our days, but lately I’ve been resorting to 30-75 minute walks just to occupy our time.

So, for those of you who are great at baby play, what are your favorite games and activities to play with babies and toddlers?

Celebrate backwards WFMW and ask your question today!

As I’ve been working on patience a lot lately (okay, always), I’ve had occasion to think about it quite a bit as well. And I realized that I don’t always know what patience is.

I’ve been surprised to find that there was actually a lag between losing my temper and losing my patience. I think that having a lag there is a big improvement over going to straight to losing my patience!

Okay, I know that sounded a little esoteric, so here’s a more concrete explanation: I’ve realized that the more I work on patience, I have still gotten angry or frustrated (lost my temper)—but I hadn’t yet acted on that to “lose my patience.”

I’ve been disappointed with myself for losing my temper as I’m working on developing patience. But when I lose my temper, if I haven’t yet acted in anger, I don’t think I’ve lost my patience. If I recognize how I’m feeling, and stop and make an effort not to act in anger, I can calm down and keep my patience.

Does that sound like an artificial distinction? I thought it was, especially when I lost my temper and my patience happened in the same instant. But the more I think about it, and the more of a gap I can create between losing my temper and losing my patience, the more I believe that this is a sign of progress. As long as I keep choosing to calm myself down, anyway.

Of course, that’s the thing with patience—it’s something you get to work on forever, since it can be so easy to lose! And once I start getting better about being patient (you know, in ten or fifteen years) (only half joking), I can work on not getting angry, either.

I’m not, in general, a bad mother. But I’m also not always the best mother that I can be. I’ve found that these three things, when I do them, make me a better mother:

1. Focus. By focus, I mean that I focus on Hayden. I really find that I enjoy my son and motherhood in general a lot more when I stop trying to get so much else done. Yes, I have to keep the house clean and my family fed, but when I spend most of my time just caring for and playing with Hayden, we both have a better day (even when the sink’s full of dishes).

2. Patience. I’m really, really working on this one because I’m not usually a patient person (especially not with family members, as sad as that is). The funny thing about patience is, of course, that even once you’ve become more patient, you get to “work” on it your whole life. It’s not like you just magically wave a wand and nothing ever upsets you again—even if it’s less frequent (which is what I’m striving toward now), our patience isn’t always perfect in this life.

3. Faith. This is in many ways interrelated with #2, because I’m using my faith to try to improve my patience. But my faith affects more of my parenting than that. It does give a long list of principles and lessons that I’m responsible for teaching my children, but it also provides me with sustaining power. I’ve had mornings where I can’t get out of bed because I’m exhausted and Hayden wakes up an hour and a half earlier than normal, and the only way I ever get out of bed on those days is after fervent prayer.

I’m far from perfect—and honestly, I know I won’t become perfect in this life, and certainly not by my own power—but when I do these three things, I enjoy motherhood more and I feel as though I’m a better mother!

What attributes or skills make you feel like a better mother?

This post is part of Mommy Zabs’ group writing project. The late part.

Saturday I got all reminiscent about how I felt about mothering before I had my son—which got me thinking. What skills or talents do you wish you had before you became a mother?

For me, that’s a pretty easy question. My first answer is always PATIENCE. I can be patient with some things, but other things, I expect to go exactly as planned or I basically freak out. This is not only bad when I lose my patience and get upset with my son, but also a bad example of how to deal with stress (and, frankly, every day life, since that’s about how often it happens!).

I also wish I’d gotten a bit more consistent with my housekeeping before he was born. It’s still a constant struggle to keep the floors clean and the dishes done around here (with much credit for the latter due to my husband).

Finally, I think I’d like to have learned more contentment. I don’t know if it’s my age or just my nature, but I frequently suffer from psychological wanderlust—I’m ready to move on to the next thing every so often. (Or perhaps four-month-long courses in college ruined me!) As fast as children grow up, it’s not ever on your time table—and when they do reach that next milestone, how often do we mothers find ourselves thinking “Man, why can’t he grow back down? It was so much easier before he could crawl/walk/drive!”

I wish that I were more naturally adept at surveying my life where it is at a given point and being able to give a satisfied smile without thinking “Okay, good so far—but now what? What should I be working on next? Let’s go, go, go!”

So what skills do you wish you’d developed before your children came along? Or what would you advise a prospective mom to learn before she had children?