I’m nearly four years into this relatively new position of “Mother”.
There was no interview process. No selection criteria whatsoever. No advance training. And yet the Man Upstairs saw fit to grant me Mother status in 2011. And even more remarkable still, two years later he was generous enough to promote me to Mother-of-Two.
Annual Mother’s Day cards bestow fantastical titles of “Best Mum in the World”. But in reality I haven’t a clue whether I’m any good at this job. All I know is that I could certainly do it better. So isn’t that as good a New Year’s resolution as any?
I know I’m not a fantastic mum, and I suspect I’m not a terrible one, but given that this is the most important job I do, there is definite room for improvement, regardless of where I sit on the spectrum.
It’s not that I’ve been given any negative feedback as such. It’s not that my “areas of development” have been actively pointed out to me by my three-and-a-half year-old, or that I’ve been informed by my little boy that I’m below average on the “bell curve”.
But I know I cut corners. And I have been known, on occasion, to have what could be termed an “attitude problem” (ie “Oh good Jesus, they are driving me around the bend” moments). And that I don’t always take the time to appreciate all that is great about my babies, and the privilege that is looking after them.
So perhaps this January it’s as much about resolving to be a happier mammy as a better mammy, because doesn’t one naturally follow the other?
Honest feedback
I wish I had honest feedback. I wish someone would sit me down and berate the presence of salt in my boiled carrots, or the prevalence of Peppa Pig on our telly. Because maybe then I’d be inspired to be better at this mothering game.
Perhaps someone could also see fit to point out my strengths, because, Lord knows, I certainly struggle to identify them. And kids are far better at telling you what you are doing wrong, than what you’re somehow managing to do right. Not to mention the general feedback the world at large sees fit to throw at you.
Being lectured to by oceans of books and theories and experts just exhausts and confuses me. I need tailored, individualised feedback, not 400 pages on DIY kid rearing.
So, in the absence of a line manager, a mentor or a performance review, I’m going to carry out “360 feedback” on myself, and have a stab at revising my behaviour in 2015 accordingly. And I will post my revised standards (some higher, some lower) on my fridge, because maybe if I see fit to announce my New Year’s resolutions to the world at large, I might actually stick to them.
1 I will try to listen more, and bribe and admonish less. Even if that means counting to 10 in my head 1,000 times a day.
2 I will use my phone less. (One won ders what kind of marvel the playground must have been before smartphones, when parents talked to each other, and to their children.)
3 I will not try to "persuade" my children to do things they clearly do not want to do, and then convince myself it's what they wanted.
4 I will not use the naughty step as a time out as much for myself as for them, because that's just plain wrong.
5 I will call a truce on the long-running battle with the contents of our laundry basket, and just accept that I will never again see its lining.
6 I will try to brush my one-year-old's teeth more regularly.
I will try not to use the fact he “doesn’t like it” as an excuse, because that is just plain pathetic.
7 I will give up waging war on m post-baby figure because that is just yet one more distraction that draws me farther from my babies.
8 I will try to find the strength of will to break their bad habits; to stick it out through thick and thin when he roars hysterically at 4am for another bottle he does not need.
9 I will try not to hurry them on occasions when there is, in reality, no real time pressure upon us, other than Mammy's general inbuilt need to feel she is somehow making "progress" through an otherwise unstructured day.
The world will not end if they are still in their jammies at 10am.
10 I will play with them more, even if that means they eat more frozen veg, because my mother always said that that was one of her great regrets. It turns out that being loved is as important as being well fed.
And lastly, I will give Claire Micks, Mother-of-Two (average at best, sub-standard at worst) regular, honest appraisals, and a good kick in the backside whenever she is slipping, because four years in, I’m not sure how I have “developed” as a mother. And in the absence of anyone else to point out my weaknesses to me, I need to take charge of them.
Perhaps many parents’ unspoken fear is that, actually, we’re not all that good at this job after all. Perhaps that’s why so many of us choose to focus on our professional lives, where we are already recognised as competent human beings well capable of “fulfilling our objectives”. Child rearing? Not so much so. There’s no obvious gold standard for that. Entirely more difficult, and less predictable. I will never be Supermum. But I shouldn’t use that as an excuse not to try a little harder.
