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Challenge: Parenting Resolutions

A Mom's New Year's Resolution

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We all know the typical resolutions, spend less, save more, get healthy, lose weight, the list goes on an on. Once you are a mother everything changes. Everything you do is for your family. That is why I have a different New Year's Resolution.

Yes, I need to lose weight and get healthy. I need to eat healthier and cook more meals. I need to save more money and not spend so much. I want to work less and play more. Take my daughter outside to play more. Do better at keeping up with the house work.


You know what scratch that, I am going to stop being so hard on myself. And you know what, I think every mom should join me.

We are all so hard on ourselves to make everything perfect. We have to have a picture perfect house. No dirty dishes or unfolded laundry. A child that knows the alphabet before they are 2. We want to brag about the meals we cooked and show that we can make healthy foods our family likes.

We put on a front. We share the good on Facebook and Twitter, but we don't dare tell anyone that the meal we made was met with rejection and instead we ordered pizza. The picture of the beautiful kitchen doesn't show the dirty dishes that were shoved in the dishwasher to hide.

Being a mom parent is hard work. We work 40 hours a week and when we come home we just want to sit and enjoy our kids but we have a house we have to take care of. I have decided that I am done with the "fake it until you make it" mentality. No more front, no more feeling bad when I don't get something done, no more being so hard on myself.

If I don't get something done it's O.K., there is no need to be perfect and no need to beat myself up over it. My New Year's Resolution this year is to stop trying to be the perfect parent and just be the best mother I know how to be.

How about you? Are you harder on yourself than you need to be? Do you want to make it your resolution to just be the best parent you can and not the perfect parent?

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