When You Hate Being a Mom

Last week I got together for breakfast with my good friend Deniece Williams, Grammy-award artist and mom extraordinaire. As usual, our conversation veered towards discussing our kids and trading parenting horror stories: car keys borrowed without permission, surprise meals for mom that ended up in disaster, a huge Amazon credit card bill for Legos… the list goes on. Most of them we eventually learn to laugh off. Some still made us only half-laugh. I had just shared a particularly crazy one, which had us roaring with laughter when Deniece said:

“James, I love being a mom. But there have been times that… Hmm-hmmm!”

She shook her head with a smile and took a deep breath.

I immediately knew what she meant, and I was reminded of how willfully ignorant I had been.

As a guy, I’ve always idealized moms to be moms, loving, accepting, and sometimes super frustrated with kids but always ready to turn the page and kiss the boo-boo better. That’s a mom’s job, right? I’d never stopped to consider how motherhood affects a woman. I mean, beyond the obvious.

Sometimes we don’t stop to think about what sacrifices have been made, which paths have not been taken, and how dreams get postponed, shelved, and, more often than not, forgotten. Just a quick browsing through statistics will tell you that mothers are the ones pulling the short straw when it comes to parenting. Either they drop everything they had planned in life or continue with their plans juggling so many hats that they end up with little to no me-time. The way I see it, society has made it so that mother is expected to pull triple duty without the support of their employer and often their partner and kids.

Now, let me be clear, I have not met a single mom who regrets being a mom. In fact, they regard their kids as their greatest achievement and joy. No sacrifice is too great, and no task too daunting if it means their children will be happy, healthy, and successful.

But I’ve discovered that they get reprimanded and shunned by others when they dare speak differently from the motherhood script they’re supposed to follow. The pressure to be a Mom goes beyond the actual duties and tasks that a mother tends to have to do for her kid. It’s also an imposed vision of what mothering can and cannot do. Admitting and being vocal about the negative emotions that surface at times is not something society at large wants to hear - they prefer you sing the praises of child-rearing. So, instead of being encouraged to explore these feelings, mothers are guilted into silence.

As we all know, bottled-up emotions have a knack for causing Krakatoa-style eruptions, which mostly lead to more festering and possibly more meltdowns. Or maybe you push them down so deep you start regarding your kids as frienemies?: “Sure, green trousers with orange polka dot tee, what a great outfit for your first date! Now, here’s a spray paint can; go leave her a message on her sidewalk; she’ll love it”  See what I mean?

So all of you moms reading this, please know that when you hate being a mom, you need to speak out! When you share these feelings, you’re actually helping change this stagnant view of who you are and who you need to be as a mother and bringing a lot of truth into this very whitewashed concept.

 (I explore more extensively the sentiment of hatred in parents in my complimentary ebook, How to Stop Hating Being a Parent, which you can download here.).

Choosing a Sport

I think most fathers want to see their sons play a sport. When I was a kid, it was baseball. It’s a good thing I loved the game (I still do, I even collect cards!). Practicing baseball was never a chore.

I felt that Aaron would benefit from baseball too. But, unlike the days of my childhood when it was easy to find enough kids to play with at the ballpark on any given day, today it’s impossible to even find six! So I’ve settled on teaching him fundamentals, like catching and throwing.

And, as an added bonus,  it’s great exercise…for the parents, because you have to keep chasing the ball. Kids can’t throw straight.

It’s plain to see that soccer has replaced baseball as the neighborhood game. When I was a kid, we didn’t have soccer. Instead, growing up in the Midwest we played a lot of hockey too. That was the sport my dad wanted me to practice, which I did, and which I never liked.

Aaron playing soccer. He LOVES this sport.

Check out my podcast episode about choosing sports for kids:

Soccer is a sport kids are learning to play from 3 years of age, which is amazing. Aaron loves soccer and, like many kids his age, he’s been playing in a league for about 4 years.  I love the look on his face when he scores a goal, and when after he makes a great play and looks at me with a proud look on his face I just want to run on the field and give him a hug and kiss. (I don’t, of course, cool factor and all that)

In my search to help him find his niche sport we tried golf and he actually enjoys it. The problem is he thinks I’m his caddy and has me working for him. There’s a point in which my shoulder just wants to quit.

We also do tennis, which he likes too. He has been playing twice a week but in the summer, with the temperatures in the 100’s, it gets harder to play…Not for him but for me. After we play, I need a good nap.

When it comes to football he likes throwing the ball around - and that’s about it.

I’m sure I’ll continue to encourage him to do more sports (he just started swimming lessons) and we’ll keep discovering what works and what doesn’t. I’ve come to realize that ultimately it’s not the sport I’d like him to practice but the one(s) that he chooses to do. As gung-ho as I once was on him learning only baseball I see now that it’d be an error to impose on him such expectations. Good attitude towards the sports you practice leads to great sportsmanship and I think that beats stealing all bases. Well, almost.

So for now we’ll be concentrating on baseball, soccer and tennis. And Roblox as his indoor game - I hear it’s really good for thumb dexterity.