Motherhood Challenges Need a Grit and Grace Life

This Is What Justin Timberlake Taught Me About Motherhood

Anyone else have the same albums saved on their iTunes account from the (dinosaur) days before streaming services? I must have downloaded Spotify around 2013 because when I’m not paying attention and plug my phone into my car, I’m listening to the likes of Nora Jones, Rascal Flatts, some old school Beyoncé, and Justin Timberlake. One of the songs that came on this morning was Justin Timberlake’s “Mirrors,” a beautiful love ballad created for his wife. Today, however, I found myself sitting in the Target parking lot thinking on the lyrics to this song, not from the perspective of a love song, but from the perspective of a mother. His words struck me: “It’s like you’re my mirror, my mirror staring back […]

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This Is What My 7-Year-Old Taught Me That Still Helps Me Today

By Jennifer Schoonover / Motherhood

Sitting in a circle, criss-cross applesauce, on a colorfully patterned carpet, I am listening to each of the second graders in my group take turns reading aloud. Today is Tuesday, and it’s my day to volunteer in my seven-year-old son’s classroom. As I sit looking at the little faces around our circle, I notice the little face that belongs to me. I smile and look him over, trying to imprint his image on my heart’s memory. I know how fast this time goes and I don’t want to forget one detail. That’s when I notice that he is wearing purple socks. Except he doesn’t own purple socks and he is wearing a green shirt. Oh my goodness, who dressed this child and

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Dear Mom, I Will Always Need You (Even Now That I’m a Mom)

By Ashley Johnson / Audio Articles, Motherhood

(Listen to the audio version of this article here.) Yesterday my mom sent me a text asking if she could take my two toddlers and me to Costco. And she did. She came over at 10 a.m., acted as if she didn’t notice the disaster my house was, took my son to the bathroom while my daughter was melting down in my arms, and ignored my poor attitude. The truth is, I was about to melt down myself… which she probably knew. I now understand the uncanny accuracy of a mother’s intuition. They know so much more than they let on. They do so much parenting without even saying a word. I know this now, and I’ve only got three years under

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Sure, It Was a Disaster… But Not a Failure

By Laila Schell / Motherhood

Lately I’ve been feeling like a failure and I just can’t seem to shake it. Maybe it’s because I’ve been with my kids for six months straight and I literally can’t remember the last time the house was clean and quiet. Or maybe it’s because we’re smack in the middle of a pandemic and every single decision I make (or don’t make) has me questioning whether or not it’s the right one, and whether or not some crazy butterfly effect will take place six months down the road, where I’ll look back and realize I have done something terribly wrong. Either way, I just had to sit down and write about it because I have a feeling I’m not the only one,

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To the Moms in the Middle Years

By Meaghan Dawson / Motherhood

“Mom, stop talking please. You’re embarrassing me.” This was spoken, of course, through gritted teeth in a pleading whisper as my 13-year-old sat in the front seat next to me, his friends tucked into the back during our daily afternoon carpool. It was after I made the deadly mom mistake of trying to engage a car full of prepubescent boys in conversations by asking how their day was. This, moms in the middle, is a fatal mistake. It Will Hit You Like a Sucker Punch You know this, right? If you’re in the middle, you know. One day you’re hip and cool and wearing the latest denim and the next, you’re excited about your new vacuum and color-coded carpool schedules. It happens

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5 Tips for Grit and Grace as a Single Mom

By Clare Marlow / Motherhood

Being a single mom is hard. And beautiful. I was a single mom for nine years. It was not easy. It was not cool. It was definitely not what I signed up for—or remotely anticipated—when I got married and had the child I had always desired. I was walking pretty smoothly through life when it went sideways. I became a single mom in a single instant when my husband died suddenly and tragically. I was in utter anguish over his death. Angry, oh so very angry, about being a widow. But I did not ever experience anguish over being a single mom. Heartbreak about my daughter losing her dad? Big time! Fear that I couldn’t raise her as well as two parents? Absolutely. Lots of it! Anxiety about how I

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What Your Kids Get When You Let Them Fail

By Dr. Zoe / Motherhood

I am not letting you off the hook as parents, but we seriously work way too hard sometimes. I’m talking about myself here. Scenario: I just got back home from taking my son to school. I have a million things to do in the next hour. I get an urgent text from my son saying that he forgot his iPad on the kitchen island (again) and needs it ASAP (of course!). Dilemma: I should really say no and let him learn his lesson, but it kills me that he will get an F because that assignment due today was on his iPad. Then my mind starts racing. This is high school! If he gets an F, it will affect his GPA. He

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Detangling the Lies You Believe in Motherhood

By Amy Geiger / Motherhood

I sat on the couch annoyed. I would be spending the next hour of my life detangling my two-year-old’s beautiful hair. Ever since she started preschool, she’s had this nervous habit of twirling her hair into knots. I am not referring to simple knots that are easily taken out by a comb. Picture instead a matted mess of dreads all along the left side of her head. After a long day of teaching, this was the seventh consecutive day that I had spent unknotting and untwisting the disaster. All I wished to do in that moment was to laugh with her, to read with her, or just do something halfway pleasant. Instead, she sat and watched Mickey Mouse and I was infuriated

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When You Don’t Love Your Kids’ Dreams

By Carey Melton / Motherhood

There is something to be said for a kid who knows what they want and won’t let it go. We all remember Ralphie from the timeless Christmas classic, “A Christmas Story,” and his infamous Red Ryder BB gun. We saw the joy it brought him and we rallied behind his dream of owning that gun. But we also saw how the adults in his life labeled his obsession as immaturity and a “little” dream. But it wasn’t little to him. With the humblest of intentions, we dream of our children growing up and living a comfortable American Dream life, and we decorate their nurseries with Hobby Lobby art that read phrases like “Dream big, little one” and “If you can dream it,

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When and How to Start Your Child’s Skin Care Routine

By Cherie Shaw / Health & Beauty, Motherhood

I still have the picture. My third grade class photo, the one in which I wore my Snoopy necklace and cowl neck sweater, the one that plainly displays my first run-in with a chin pimple gone wild. I love that photo and hate it all at once, even now over 40 years later. I don’t know if skincare was even a thing when I was nine years old. By the time the term “skin care” popped across my radar, I was a 15- or 16-year-old who dabbled with drug store astringents and masks praying something would help me get a peaches and cream complexion. When nothing seemed to help, I dreamed of the day I would have enough of my own money

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How Parents Can Encourage Interest in STEM Subjects

By Today's Collaborative Writer / Motherhood

It is a fact that in most countries, the interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM) subjects is decreasing. Students are opting for what they consider to be easier subjects. As a result, our STEM sectors are suffering from a huge downturn in qualified graduates entering the sector. As a parent, of course, you want our kids to follow their own path and find a career that they will love but by encouraging their interest in STEM subjects, you can build their confidence and spark their imagination too. Girls, in particular, are underrepresented at all levels of STEM education and careers. Even if your child chooses a different direction for their career, you know that they will at least have a

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Is School Starting or Not? Hope for Stressed Moms

By Darlene Brock / Health & Beauty, Motherhood

I was in Walmart recently as they were filling the shelves with the annual back-to-school supplies. It’s 2020, and a new school year is starting. Or is it? Are they teaching in the classroom, or is the education they offer online? Or, are you faced with the option to choose? If you’re like most parents looking to their school board for guidance, you are still in uncharted and uncertain territory. As in most things, information comes from every side, and what it brings is almost impossible to weed through because it remains contradictory. The American Academy of Pediatrics says kids need to go to school, “the APA strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal

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To The Mom Worried About What To Feed Her Child

By Today's Collaborative Writer / Motherhood

Working out what to feed your child can feel like a neverending ordeal, especially when young. During the early months, it’s either breast milk, formula, or a bit of both. But as they get older, they start to move over to solid food, and that’s when the real problems can begin. Feeding a child can be a source of concern. You instinctively know that it’s a central part of their lives. But getting them to eat a balanced diet from the get-go can be a challenge. They don’t always want to play ball. Moms have to be careful, though. It’s normal for children to avoid eating particular foods. But if they feel pressured into doing so, it can create even more problems

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This Is What Being a Surrogate Taught Me

By Jessica Girado / Motherhood, Best Of

“But in my opinion a mother isn’t born when a child is born. A mother and father are born when the dream of a child is conceived.” Lindsey Henke There I was, strapped to a table in the operating room waiting to meet two beautiful babies that were growing in my belly. I was nervous and anxious, not knowing what to expect. I had given birth five times before, but this experience was so very new to me. I needed a C-section, they said. It’s not how we expected the babies to arrive, but it was a joyful moment nonetheless. My husband held my right hand and the mother of the babies held my left one. She stood there with anticipation and

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A Simple Phrase That Will Encourage Every Mom

By Meaghan Dawson / Motherhood

It’s been happening for about a month now, this 3 a.m. visit. It starts with a creeping tip-toe, then a gentle tap on my shoulder. Sometimes there are tears, sometimes there aren’t. But it always ends the same, really, with an elbow in my ribs and a foot jammed into my husband’s back. Always. We’re really not sure why they started, these visits. If you ask my daughter during the daytime, when she’s wide awake and lucid, she wouldn’t be able to tell you. It’s a mystery even to her. But for whatever reason, every night for the past few weeks, she’s visited our bedroom in the wee hours of the morning, scared and needing comfort. So, of course, we open up

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4 Simple Ways to Care for Kids After Divorce

By Ashley Vancil / Motherhood

One of the hardest parts about divorce with children is trying to stay on level ground. Let’s be real, divorce is never easy, but when there are children involved it makes things a lot more complicated. The thing we need to remember, though, is that our kids aren’t divorcing when we do. They didn’t choose this path. It is where they were placed and finding a way to make that transition easier for them should be the main goal for everyone involved. Having young children, I have realized that through this process they crave and need the same things from both sides: security, communication, and love. Pretty simple, you would think, but so many factors play into making it happen. Going between

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To the Woman Who Cleaned up After My Autistic Son

You Don’t Have to Make an Income to Contribute to Your Family

By Amber Koehn / Motherhood

All my life, I wanted to be a mother. It’s just something I knew, deep down, I was meant to be. I also knew that I would have to work outside the home, because if I stayed at home all day with kids, I would go crazy. To me, I didn’t think I could be fulfilled or feel important if I wasn’t working full-time. It’s kind of funny sometimes how life proves a person wrong. After my first two daughters were born, I thought I had a system all figured out. My husband ran a restaurant at the time, so he was never home. He also decided to go back to school full-time and earn his degree, so I was the one

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