Supermom
“The supermom is always the first to snap. They’ve done studies.” Edie (Nicolette Sheridan), questioning whether Bree (Marcia Cross) committed murder, on Desperate Housewives.

This isn’t an article about how to get your kids in line. It’s about how to make the years of being a mother a fun trip - a personal high, instead of merry-go-round of drudgery. But you’ll be surprised to learn that making sure you’re having fun might be the best thing you can do for your kids.
You know the metaphor that everyone tells you after you’ve had a mothering meltdown – the one about how you have to put the oxygen mask on your own face before you can put in on your kids. Have you ever noticed how the most overused metaphor we mothers hear comes from the instructions for a plane crash?

Well, the parallel may not be just a coincidence. In addition to the toll of the day-to-day activities of raising kids, competition has become fierce. The demand for raising Super Kids has spiraled out of control. Parenting has always been competitive, but the offerings of self-improvement technologies for babies, such as sign language classes, music classes for babies, movements for potty training infants, among a slate of others – all come with the pressure that your child will fall behind if not pursued.

I too bought into the madness of modern motherhood. The day I realized there had to be another way, was the time I was sitting in a sign language class with my eight month old and I realized that all the other mothers were looking at me like I was an idiot. I did feel mentally handicapped. Six weeks into the class I hadn’t learned any of the signs. All the other mothers learned them all. We were going through the review, and I sat there motionless like a moron. After six weeks in the class, not a single sign had registered in my foggy brain. No wonder my son wasn’t picking it up.

I’d felt the need to explain to my playgroup why my son hadn’t learned how to sign when he was hungry, and here I was realizing I didn’t even know the sign.

How did I get here? What was I doing in a sign language class for an infant? Why didn’t I learn a single sign? Somewhere along the way, someone convinced me that sign language was essential for a child’s language development. Actually, it wasn’t a someone, it was a lot of someones. Every where I turned, people were teaching their babies sign language and telling me how fundamental it was to their development. Already feeling guilty because I was working full time, I knew I couldn’t wreak further deprivation on my son, so we went to sign classes along with the mommy and me music classes everyone said you had to take.

I didn’t learn anything in the class because I was too tired. I was too tired from sleep deprivation typical when raising a baby, too tired from my full time job and making up for my guilt by running around to classes and playgroups to create the optimal world for creating the Baby Einstein which had become the standard.

Despite my profound embarrassment in that class, I reclaimed my dignity. Like the turning point in every sappy inspirational film or book, a voice of triumph from deep within grew strong in me that declared, “I am not a moron.”
It became a turning point for me. I realized that I could take the power and throw off the chains of the cultural demand that I raise or want to raise a baby Einstein. Why had it become the standard in our culture? I decided I would become a mother who could throw off the chains of oppression in the age of competition.

Stand Up For Your Rights
All the books on being a mom are about how not to damage your kid. Or how to get them to sleep. Or how to get them to act nice. Meanwhile, mommies are relegated to becoming the “bubble butt soccer moms” of Saturday Night Live parody. We resign our own interests, our own sexuality, our own lives on the playing field of competitive parenting.
Back to the oxygen mask metaphor. It’s actually much deeper than that. It’s not just that you put the oxygen mask on your baby or child.

You are your child’s oxygen.

If you aren’t fanning the flames of your own life, your child will suffocate. Your child breathes in your atmosphere. If you become a genius in your own right, your child will simply breathe in who you are and become likewise. If you lead your life with joy, your child will follow suit.

The enterprise of sacrificing ourselves to give our children what we deny to ourselves is wrong-headed and doomed to fail. We must tend our own garden, generate the abundance of plant life to produce the oxygen that our children survive and thrive on.

Parenting with Passion
The first rule for lighting your own fire is to find and follow your own deepest desires. If you don’t like music, don’t take the music class. If you don’t like sign language, don’t take the sign language class. Figure out what you need, figure out how to meet those needs and take your kids along for the ride.

In my case, I charted a course of my own interests. I loved exploring the healing arts. I took time out to take a training in Reiki energy healing. I practiced energy healings on my kids and shared with them how to do it. I take time out to massage my son, teach him how to massage his baby sister, and have him run a back roller massage tool over my own back. Now that’s an activity that keeps on giving. I don’t need to go get a professional massage to recuperate from a day of back-breaking self-sacrifice. I found a way to explore my interests, teach my kids interesting things, and get a free massage – a short and sloppy one, but a massage of sorts nonetheless.

Following your own bliss can also yield points on the parenting competition playing field. I often get surprised looks when my son starts whining, “bookstore, go bookstore, I need bookstore.” This all happened because I love bookstores so much. I found a bookstore that has a train set. My son is obsessed with trains. I go to the store, do the rounds, pick a few books off the shelves, buy a latte and sit down with my books while my son plays with the trains and my infant daughter crawls around. My son loves the bookstore because of the train set. But I also think he picks up on my own happy vibe with latte and book. “Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

The competitive fanaticism will tell you that reading books to your kids is the best way to get ahead. I definitely advocate for reading books to your kids. But, truthfully, I read many more books in front of my kids (books for me) than I actually read to my kids. Sometimes I feel really guilty about this. But I made an interesting observation. Kids do what their parents do. Many times when I’m distracted from playing with my kids, I have my nose in a book. They’re playing, I’m reading. On many occasions, I see my son pick up a book and start to “read.” He figured out that reading must be cool since Mommy is always doing it. So he loves books now too.

That doesn’t mean you have to love books. The point is that when you do what you love, rather than what you’re supposed to be doing, your kids will pick up valuable skills, no matter what it is that you love to do. When you do what you’re supposed to do, your kids pick up the vibes of forced enthusiasm. If your kids demand that you play with them, and you’re bored out of your mind but play anyway, they will learn the subtler truth of putting your own needs on a backburner.

One woman, loved to watch business shows on TV. Like most mothers, she felt like a criminal anytime she watched TV, especially watching a program that wasn’t designed to boost her baby’s brain power. But she just loved to watch them, and she did. By the time her kids went to school and she was looking for a job she had gained vast knowledge about the business world and the financial markets. With no formal background in business, she was able to translate her natural brilliance and passion for the markets into a new career on Wall Street – literally Wall Street in New York City with one of the most prestigious investment firms. Imagine what would have happened if she would have denied herself the pleasure of watching her own shows, and instead had limited herself to Elmo viewing in the interest of letting her child get ahead.
You too can find your passion and purpose and even while raising young children or teenagers. It will be a great gift to your children to have a radiant mom.

For more tips and tools about parenting visit http://www.visionarysoul.com.

To listen to Dr. Honos-Webb's internet radio interview with IP Editor in Chief, Sandie Sedgbeer, click here...

SPECIAL NOTE: As an expert in ADHD, Lara has created a number of FREE video tips and tools and uploaded them to YouTube. To access these, please click on the links below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyD41IhOqsY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvqU3b6Wfno
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O7iAsumBDw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWjAV687EQc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vk-C3FAlgo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLF-3mL0UB4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q53zBvBdfbw

© Lara Honos-Webb, PhD, 2008

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