Truth for the Trenches

I couldn't make a breakfast that they liked. I had to put the Nerf guns on the highest garage shelf because I caught my 9 year old climbing out a window to go play when he had been told to brush his teeth. That simple task always gets a response of arguing and complaining. What I hear from my kids' reactions is "I am the worst mom ever for making them eat breakfast, brush their teeth, take periodic showers, and stop waking the neighbors up by bouncing basketballs at 6 a.m." It is easy for me to believe their opinions are true. In those moments I can't laugh. Their discontent towards me by not reading their minds and meeting all their expectations has me convinced I am terrible at this mom role. With very little time for self-reflection it is easy to believe the external voices that speak more loudly than our own internal voice. A friend and I compared our grocery budgets and how many meals we cook a day. I left the conversation feeling as if I was missing out and

I wouldn’t allow him to have four bowls of cereal for breakfast. Riding his bike in underwear was against the rules and coloring with Sharpies on his grandmother’s Pottery Barn couch was out of the question. In an attempt to ignore the yelling and having a stuffed animal thrown at my face, I was buried in Instagram. Surely enough scrolling would make me numb to the name-calling. My five-year-old was furious at me. He threw a Costco-sized glass grinder of Pink Himalayan Salt on the kitchen floor. Shocked that it shattered, he ran upstairs crying "I'm stupid. No one likes me."    Being screamed at by my children was becoming an hourly battle. “How does that make you feel?” my mom asked me over the phone as the tears rolled down my cheeks. Their reactions revealed a thunderous roar of my own fears that I had been trying to ignore. The story I had been telling myself was: “I never get anything right. They are angry at everything I do. I messed this entire motherhood thing up.