A few years ago, I stupidly and naively told a friend that I didn't really have a lot of mommy guilt. I worked really hard at my relationships. Especially my marriage and being a mom. If you worked really hard at something, it made sense to be pretty decent at it. My friend, a little further down the mamahood path than me and significantly wiser, ignored the stupidity of the statement and all its implications, and just smiled thoughtfully at me and said "give it time, and when it happens, give yourself some grace." I didn't really get what she meant at the time, but the funny thing about things you say thoughtlessly...they frequently come back to bite you in the ass.
Fast forward several years, I was cleaning out the kids' backpacks one weekend and came across a draft of our son's writing assignment about our family. He's all Kindness and Cuddles and pretty perceptive, so, I was looking forward to reading what he had to say about all of us. What made him special was his heart. His sister was short and cute and loved all foods but especially peanut butter. How his dad was "the best fixer" and his dream is to retire early. Under mine, KC put "she's the best cook, and we both love to swim", but he also put "I need more attention." Oooof, that was a direct hit to my overly assured heart and shortsighted thoughts on being relational. I tried to take it as calmly as possible and later asked him about it when we were in the car just the two of us. He was pretty matter of fact about it. He wasn't being mean about it. Just honest. He felt that his sister got more attention from me than he did (he's not wrong, she's more attached to me than he is) and sometimes he wished it was him. After taking a few breaths, I told him I could get that and asked what I could do to help give him the attention he wanted. He asked me to read with him more. I asked him if there was anything else I could he do, and he said "no". His list was actually pretty short and I promised to work on that.
When I was a kid, my parents bought us a lot of devotionals. Probably wanting to instill in me their faith and a practice of quiet and reflection that I am still terrible at. (Sorry, Mom and Dad!) But in random quotes that stick out from ancient memories, "Fail Forward" was one I still think of often. There was something that I found striking about that - the acceptance of the fact that we would fail at different points, but we should do it in a way that we could learn from it for the future. There was something comforting in acknowledging that our pedestalizing perfection was completely unrealistic and there was a better way. Some days I think I'm pretty good at remembering this. There are plenty of days that I'm not and trying to achieve the unattainable at speeds of pure ridiculousness. Patience is still the stupidest fruit of the spirit, folks.
I had some time to think after that drive with KC and was fortunate enough to have my sister and a good friend point out that it was actually a really good talk. It was giving him a chance to feel like his voice was heard and things he said could be actionable and for a 7 year old to communicate that way was pretty emotionally healthy. It was a good learning point for both of us. In the weeks after, I was a lot more intentional about carving out time to read with him more one-on-one and found that it was really beneficial to both of us. I really enjoyed cuddling and reading with him and his confidence grew and reading skills improved significantly. I also made a point to be better about rotating between him and his sister at bedtime and one night, he asked me to rub his belly as he was falling asleep. As he drifted off to dreamland, he whispered, "this is good attention, Mama" :D Here's to failing forward and continuing to learn more each day...
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