Do Your Best…What?!?!
(Below is an excerpt from mine and my sisters book, 2 Sisters’ Misguided Manual to Motherhood. Available on Amazon.com)
Do your best…what?!?!
What is your best? All throughout life we hear the common phrase, “Just do your best.” Well, for those of us who are perfectionists, this concept gets hazy, ‘cause there is always, I could have done better. Ya know how it goes: I could have worked harder, I could have worked longer. Then, when we throw this concept into the parenting arena, we are wondering how much therapy our kids are going to need by the time they are twenty, ‘cause, I could have done it better!
As parents, we want to do a GOOD job of raising our kids. We want them to know we love them. We want to be a patient teacher to them. We want to have tea parties and play Legos, all the while teaching them values that will help them throughout their entire lives. We want to teach them responsibility, respect, love, and compassion. Naturally, we are not perfect, and as we see ourselves falling short of our “BEST” expectations of ourselves, we begin a destructive cycle of guilt and never feeling like we are ENOUGH.
For example your day might look like this…
You were up at 1:00am with a crying baby and up again at 3:00am with a kid who insisted there was a monster in his closet. Finally, at 4:00am all were sleeping once again, only to have your alarm ring at 6:30am to begin your day. You drag yourself out of bed, doing your “BEST” to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, getting your six-year-old and eight-year-old out the door to school, but you feel like a truck hit you, so rather than make them a warm bowl of oatmeal like all the parents who do their “BEST” do, you throw a bowl of stale Captain Crunch in front of them. Now, the stale factor is not actually your fault, ‘cause the kids keep leaving the bag of cereal open when they put the box away. But it inevitably becomes your fault as you tell yourself you need to do a BETTER job of teaching your kids how to clean up after breakfast. I mean, HOW are they going to keep a job someday if you haven’t even succeeded in getting them to routinely fold down the cereal bag? Finally, with a kiss planted on their cheeks, you send them out the door at 7:30 to catch their ride. Then you run back to your bed as fast as you can, hoping your three-year-old and ten-month-old sleep at least ONE more hour. You lie there trying to catch up on some lost sleep, but in the back of your mind, your “Do Your Best Sergeant” is chanting, “Laundry! Dishes! Toilets! Don’t forget to mop the floor so when the baby eats off of it today you won’t feel as bad!” Your body’s need for sleep wins THIS battle, but the feelings of inadequacy are still there when you wake. Your three-year-old pulls you out of bed after you finally quit thinking long enough to sleep for just 20 minutes. Again, stale Captain Crunch is on the breakfast menu. Afterwards, while you are cleaning up the breakfast mess, you feel guilty for yelling at your daughter when she stuck her elbow in her bowl, dumping it all over. NOW you are telling yourself how you need to be a patient mom who doesn’t “yell over spilt milk”. The rest of the day is filled with a couple tea parties with your toddler and lots of household chores, that is, when the baby doesn’t insist he be front and center. That afternoon, when the “sacred” naptime is almost near, you clean up the smeared jelly on the table from lunch and you begin to make the IMPOSSIBLE list of all the chores you intend on finishing while the kids sleep. Later that afternoon, you load the younger kids into the van and go pick up your older kids from school. The rest of the afternoon is filled with more chores, keeping the baby out of the toilet, putting your three-year-old in time-out for coloring on the walls, and convincing your first-grader that it is against the law to make water balloons inside the house, ALL while somehow managing to cook dinner and wash a load or two of laundry so your husband will have clean underwear to put on before work tomorrow. Oh, and then it is off to the little league game at 7:00pm! After the game, the evening is filled with dinner cleanup, followed by baths and a bedtime story. You kiss the kids goodnight and tuck them in three times, ‘cause they need to go potty, get their OTHER favorite teddy bear, or tell you about an owie they JUST discovered on their finger. Once tucked away for sure, you throw a load of laundry in the dryer. As you collapse into bed, your “Do Your Best” sergeant orders, “You need to be MORE patient! You need to have more tea parties! You need to keep a cleaner floor and DEFINITELY cleaner toilets! You need to read more stories! You obviously aren’t doing your “BEST”, because you can do BETTER!”
Now, obviously, your day may not look EXACTLY like the scene above, but I’m sure many of you can relate to the demands of parenthood. I remember, when my kids were babies, I would feel guilty for napping when they would nap. I thought I should be doing housework, or better yet, reading my Bible or some inspirational book that taught me how to be a better person. But the fact of the matter was, what I really NEEDED in that moment in order to be my true “BEST”… was a nap!!!
So, I challenge you to redefine your “BEST.” Look at yourself honestly and have VISION and FOCUS rather than expectations. EXPECTATIONS require perfection and instantaneous results. VISION requires goals and commitment to progression, but take TIME. And if you’re making progress toward your VISION, don’t beat yourself up about the rest—that will only hold you back. And seriously, set REALISTIC goals….not goals that only parents who don’t require sleep can accomplish! And in those moments of “yelling over spilt milk”, go back and teach your kids one of the most valuable lessons they can learn, and that is how to say, “I am sorry.” Our kids learn the most by example. So, yes, do your best! My definition of doing my “BEST” is simply this: learn from yesterday, accept who I am today, while growing and progressing as the future days unfold.
Jamie Lightner