How To Be A Good Mother: 9 Life-Saving Tips for Moms
Becoming a mom is the most rewarding yet stressful part of a woman’s life. Nothing will make you question yourself more than raising kids. Many women will find themselves trying to figure out how to be a good mother at some point during their parenting journey.
Whether you’re a new mom, you have adult children, a stay-at-home mom, or a working mom; these tips are for you no matter what stage of parenthood you are in.
The truth is, there is no such thing as a perfect mother, but there are many ways to be a good mom. Start with these nine parenting tips, and you will find yourself growing more and more confident as a mother.
Because being a good mom means that you are always trying to be the best mom you can be. Imperfect mothers do NOT make bad mothers.
9 Essential Tips On How To Be A Good Mother To Your Children
1. Lead By Example
You’ve likely heard the phrase “Actions speak louder than words.” And it’s true, you can tell your children repeatedly to do or not to do something, but they are going to learn more from watching you than they are from hearing you.
A mother is a child’s number one influence in this world. It’s important that they are the person they want their children to become. If you want them to be honest, you need to be honest. If you want them to be kind, demonstrate kindness in front of them.
2. Treat Them How You Would Want to Be Treated
Because children learn by what they see every day, it only makes sense that they are treated as you want to be treated. Some examples include having healthy boundaries, not forcing them to do things that make them uncomfortable, listening to them when they speak, not interrupting, saying please and thank you to them, etc.
Respect is deserved at all ages. Speaking to them and treating them like an adult is a great way to demonstrate how they should treat others as they grow up, no matter if the person is younger or older than them. If you find yourself struggling to be the mom you desperately want to be, try this 30-day mom challenge.
3. Teach Them Valuable Life Lessons
Kids need to learn so many important lessons before they enter adulthood, and it’s up to their parents to help them learn and understand these lessons. Help them learn these lessons at an early age by telling them, showing them, and letting them gain personal experience, as that will help the information sink in the best.
While there are many different lessons for kids to learn, a few essential ones are;
- You can do hard things – challenges make you stronger.
- You can’t always get what you want.
- Treat others how you want to be treated.
- Integrity is an essential core value to have.
- Everyone is deserving of love, kindness, and compassion.
- Life isn’t always fun or easy.
- You deserve love and respect – don’t tolerate being treated badly.
- Success takes hard work.
- Gratitude is the key to a joyful life.
- Nobody is perfect.
4. Protect Them – But Don’t Over-Protect Them
One of the most complex parts of motherhood is figuring out where to draw the line between protecting and being a good parent and being overprotective and causing them more harm than good.
If kids never get hurt, never fail, never have to do anything for themselves, and never experience any knocks, they will have a rough start to adulthood. It’s hard to watch your kids have to suffer, even in the slightest, but sometimes it’s necessary for their growth and success.
Let them get knocked down sometimes so they know what to do. Let them be independent to an extent so they are prepared for adulthood.
5. Listen To Them
It can be tough to sit through a story coming from a toddler. Most of it is stuttering, they lose their train of thought, and it just becomes rambling. But try your hardest to listen. They are telling you because they think it’s important, and if you ignore it, you are instilling the idea that what they have to say isn’t important.
Providing unconditional love and nurturing a child includes sacrificing time to validate them, even when it drives you a little crazy to do so.
It can also be easy to cut them off or start talking to someone else when trying to get their story together, but this isn’t helpful for them or you. Because when you are talking to adults, and you’re telling them not to interrupt, they will think back to all the times you interrupted them.
Just try to listen as much as you can. When they grow, you will miss their scattered stories.
6. Apologize & Admit When You’re Wrong
Apologizing to AND in front of your kids is so important. They need to know that everyone, adults included, makes mistakes and needs to say sorry sometimes. And even more importantly, they need to know what to do when they make a mistake or misbehave.
So if you lose your temper with a child and raise your voice or spank them, go to them after. Tell them you’re sorry, that what you did was wrong, and you’re going to try harder next time. Just because you have a parent-child relationship doesn’t mean that you and your child should behave differently.
Remember, kids learn from example. So if you react this way when you lose your temper or make a mistake, they will begin to handle their own mistakes in the same manner. You are their number one role model. Gentle parenting, or positive parenting, and treating your children how you want to be treated can go a long way in raising emotionally intelligent kids and developing a solid mother-and-child bond.
Disciplining children is one of the most complex parts of child-rearing. Try reading some parenting books that focus on modern motherhood and positive discipline and see if you resonate with the parenting styles or methods they suggest.
7. Spend One On One Time With Them Regularly
Once you have more than one child, it can seem hard to spend that quality time with them. But you must make time for it! Making them feel special and important will do wonders for their self-esteem and overall joy and contentment in the family.
One really fun thing you can do as a family is choose one day a month for each child to have a “mommy date” with you and let them help pick what you do. Put it up on the calendar so they can look forward to spending time with you that month.
8. Respect Their Father
Whether you are married to your children’s father, or you have no relationship with him whatsoever, you mustn’t talk negatively about him in front of them.
If you are married or in a relationship with their father, treat him with respect, praise him in front of them, serve him, and show your appreciation for him. Your children are learning what to expect from a family dynamic from you.
If you aren’t with your children’s father, try to refrain from speaking badly about him, even if he’s awful. They are still a part of him, no matter what. You can be honest without speaking poorly. You can say you don’t have similar values as him, you don’t see eye to eye on parenting, he’s trying to take better care of himself at the moment, etc.
9. Take Care of Yourself
Taking care of yourself as a mom is probably one of the most important things you can do for your kids. A mentally ill, stressed out, overwhelmed mom is not the best thing for your kids. You have to make time to take care of yourself and your family. And yes, sometimes that can be difficult to do. But self-care is an essential part of coping with the stress of raising a child.
Even if it just means one night a week, you take a bath in solitude, or you get to watch a funny movie before bed, or you put down the chore list and relax instead. Do some self-care that makes you feel happy, not just for you but also for your kids.
Don’t let the mom guilt get the best of you. Mothering children requires you to take care of yourself too. And taking care of yourself does NOT make you a bad mother. It’s good parenting.
In Summary: How to Be A Good Mother
Hopefully, this parenting advice can guide you on how you want to parent your children. Every mom’s journey is different, and every child is different, but if you ask your child, they will swear that you are supermom and you are the best mom out there, even if it doesn’t feel like it to you sometimes. All you can do is trial and error and see what parenting style works for you and your family. You got this, mama!
