Wearing All Your Hats Without Wearing Out, 3 of 3
My fellow weary mothers, how many times do we find ourselves overwhelmed and at our wits’ end, feeling pulled in too many directions at once? Our obligations are endless as we’re expected to be wearing multiple hats at any given moment- cook, secretary, chauffeur, nurse, referee, maid, teacher, counselor… SO many hats! How are we to keep from being constantly frazzled and depleted? I’ve identified only FOUR main hats that moms should wear. In Part 1 and 2 of this post series, we talked about the first two mom-hats, being a MASTER GARDENER and MANAGER of the MONKEYS (I don’t mean your kids). We’re ready for the VISIONARY hat and the final hat of BAROMETER.
VISIONARY Hat
Have you seen the newest non-animated version of Cinderella (Disney 2015)? Near the beginning of the story we see Cinderella receive a small but powerful message at the deathbed of her birth mother. Five simple words, “Have courage and be kind,” guided Cinderella throughout her difficult early years when she had plenty of opportunity to be resentful, vindictive, and angry.
At the end of the movie, when she has married the prince, we watch her humbly and mercifully forgive her step-mother. Cinderella’s mother had spoken life into Cinderella’s soul, blessing her with love by visualizing Cinderella’s character as kind and brave. She could see it in her mother’s eyes and hear it in her voice that her mother truly believed that Cinderella would be brave and kind, that she had the ability to be that caliber of person no matter what would come her way, and it is that visionary blessing that carried the young girl through all of her many hardships.
Scripture says that we hold the power of LIFE and DEATH in our TONGUE (Proverbs 18:21). The words we as parents choose make all the difference in whether or not we are CASTING a VISION of abundant life – the look in our eye and the sound of our voice as we’re saying we believe our child was created for good things (motivating her to excellence in efforts, kindness in interactions, and bravery in the adventures of life which all lead to abundant living). Or we hold the power of death in our words – diminishing the child’s worth, demotivating them from striving for seemingly unattainable excellence, demanding a good behavior on the outside while not shaping their heart for good on the inside. (Matthew 23:27). I am sad to say that I have learned many hard lessons about the power of word choice, tone, and the look in my eye when speaking to my kids and I will always regret these mistakes. This is the area in which I have failed the most as a mom and God has helped me to overcome so many incorrect perspectives about this area of parenthood.
Because my natural personality type is Dominant – someone who tends to think that they’re always right and their way is always the best way – you can imagine how difficult I have made life for my kids from time to time, especially before I started to recognize the great importance of our words and attitudes, and our vision for our kids. My strongest-willed son was also my firstborn son. Sadly, I had not learned the importance of being a visionary with my words when he was younger. I would scold him with words like, “Why do you always do that?” or “Stop always horsing around,” etc. My tone and the look on my face only further repeated the harsh statements. I was telling him that he was those negative behaviors. Compounding that was that the other kids would hear me say those things. How terrible! I didn’t realize it at the time but it hurt his self-worth even more that his siblings heard those negative words spoken over him and it would affect their words of him as well. Sarcasm, condescending answers, or negative jokes are all examples of the negative power of a parent’s tongue and all are things that I’ve had to work on personally. While I have done everything I can to rectify and repair the damage that I caused him and our relationship, this remains one of the biggest regrets of my life! I am convinced that regret is one of the most miserable feelings in all of humanity because there is no hope for a re-do in regret. Some things in life, actually for most things in life, we don’t get do-overs. I heard a wonderful quote that has helped me a lot in managing my regret, which said, “While it is good to look at the past to learn from it, don’t ever feed the past. Feed the future.” I will always have to live with this regret, but I am determined to put my efforts into having an abundant relationship with my son and to give him now the blessing and vision that he deserved all along. Thankfully, God is a God of transformation, making beauty from ashes (Isaiah 61:1-3). Multiple times in my journey of motherhood, I’ve experienced the gift of forgiveness from my kids, and seen God remake the brokenness that I had caused.
Here’s another example of being a VISIONARY to our kids:
* It’s Wednesday morning and Eight-year-old Emma’s laundry day. She brings down her laundry and I stand with her in the laundry room while she sorts items into categories as we talk about laundry do’s and don’ts. I notice that she had put a dress into her dirty clothes that wasn’t actually dirty. Would you believe this is a positive opportunity?! This is a great chance to help her develop her character and learn more about God’s design for her life -even to let her know that God fashioned her with his careful, intentional design because she is so highly valued by Him, and that her actions should match that intentional care.
After asking her some questions, we figure out together that she did what was EASY instead of what was BEST. I want to convey with my words, facial expression, and look in my eye, that I believe her she was meticulously crafted by God with all the treasured details that make up our dear Emma and, likewise, her work and creations and actions should be a reflection of that same caliber. Because I’m mom and wear the hat of VISIONARY, I want to give her a vision of herself as one who lives by the standard “I do what is BEST, not what is EASY.” I can give her some examples in scripture of how God blessed the person who did the BEST thing instead of the EASY thing. I can point out some times that I remember when she or someone we know did the BEST thing even though it was hard. And we can pray and ask God to help both of us be strong enough to choose the BEST over the EASY.
To do all of this with my daughter takes a lot of extra time at the moment, but it has long term great benefits for her life development and it wasn’t as destructive to our relationship as scolding her would have been. If this is a topic that I have taught to her previously (especially recently) then I would need to choose a consequence instead of a talk (some reasonable consequences might be to do an extra load of laundry or teach her how to iron her dress that is now wrinkled or have her clean out her closet to donate some items toward a charity to help her remember that there are poor children who wish they had a dress like hers). While I may need to give a consequence for her choice in this situation because I want her to know that choices have consequences, when I deliver the consequence I try to do it with an attitude of, “I am so sad to have to give this consequence but it’s important because you are a person who makes good decisions and this wasn’t a good decision. Our goal is that this consequence will help you to remember to make decisions based on what is BEST, not what is EASY.” As a parent, avoid an attitude of “I have no compassion for your situation since you brought it on yourself.” Mom, learn from MY mistake that a sarcastic tone from the parent hurts relationship and diminishes the character development opportunity for the child. Show compassion in your consequence. For example you could say, “I remember when I was a kid and instead of sweeping the floor the way I knew I was supposed to, I swept all the dirt under the rug. I got in big trouble with my mom for doing that. It’s no fun to be in trouble.”
