My mum is hilariously brutal.
She comes up with THE WORST parenting advice of all time constantly. From the moment I fell pregnant she’s been delivering zingers like this:
“Breastfeeding hurts like hell. Probably best not to do it.”
“You’ll never hate your husband more than in that first year.”
“Yes kids are cute but boy do they smell. Powder their backsides. That helps.”
“You will never get on top of the housework, ever.”
“Feed them from a jar. That way you have some time to rest instead of making food.”
“School mums are maniacs. Make sure you don’t volunteer for anything.”
And she repeats them, over and over and over again. It’s gotten to the point where I simply don’t introduce her to any friends who are expecting. She actually wrote about hating your husband on a note at a baby shower. We all had to write down one piece of advice and pin it onto a onesie, and she wrote that! It was anonymous but I was mortified.
Look, she does have a point, and I know her heart is in the right place. But I prefer to maintain the illusion (delusion) that being a mum is all soft baby cheeks, kissing heads, goo goos and ga gas. I know the rest is part of it too, but what’s the point of worrying about it? Even if you do try and warn expectant mums of the impending challenges, they don’t really listen. That baby bubble is pretty strong. There’s not much that will burst through that.
So I’ve recently returned to part time work and I’m really understanding the concept of juggling the demands of work and motherhood. Strangely, I find myself turning to my mum. Something about her bluntness, her lack-of-delusion and her practical advice appeals to me when I’m ‘in the trenches’.
We sit down and I rant and rave about how hard it all is. She seems comforted by my realistic account of modern parenting and the fact that I get it, that I now understand it’s not all about the fun stuff, comforts her. She hardly says a word. Except at the end, when I’m done, she says, “Oh well, we just do it, don’t we?”
“But how do we do it? Every day? How did you manage to do it so well?”
Mum laughed when I said that. She said that I might remember her handling it all really well but don’t I remember her rushing around after work making dinner? How she wouldn’t even eat with us because she had to clean?
She said she used to hang up the washing in the dark at 11pm and take it off the line for folding as soon as she returned home from school. She used to stay up late mopping so the house was clean and ready for the next day. She packed dad’s lunch, then her own, then our school lunches, every day before the sun had properly risen.
“Wasn’t it hard,” I say?
“Yes, but what choice did I have? I had kids, I had to work. You just do it, don’t you.”
While I don’t think the phrase, “You just do it, don’t you” is going to be printed on any Hallmark cards or touching parenting memes, I have to say that it’s the most comforting phrase I’ve ever heard from anyone because it’s so real. We don’t always love it, we don’t always enjoy it, we just do it, don’t we? Because that’s what mums, all mums, do.
What is the best parenting advice your mum has ever given to you?
Top Comments
All of the advice your mum gave you is absolutely gold and real. She is treating you as an adult and a fellow mum and everything that comes out of her mouth you should write down as they are quick shortcuts to life. I wish to god my mum told me things like that. What a gift she is giving you! Hey is she available for general advice to the public?? Ps volunteering at school IS a minefield. Beware.
Maybe not parenting, but on my sister's wedding day my mum told her that 'marriage is not all beer and skittles'.
My sister was getting married very young, and i was even younger, so it took us awhile to figure out what the saying meant. But I remember it well because before that moment it had never occurred to me that marriage could be hard.