My current momtra

When I last met with my lactation consultant - Barbara - about Anna's nursing struggles, she said something that was very powerful. She advised me that I needed to talk to Anna with an encouraging tone of voice while she was squirming, choking and crying. I tried it out, saying, "It's OK, Anna, it's OK." Barbara told me that the way I was saying, "It's OK," sounded tense and she modeled soothing Anna with a warm, "You can do it! Good girl!" I confessed that it was hard for me to be encouraging when I felt so discouraged, to which she replied, "You have to the the grown up here."

Ouch. Yet so true. I was choosing to be upset about the situation, and making Anna's problem about me and my failures as a mother. Anna needed my emotional reassurance and maturity. So I took a deep breath, told myself I had to be the grown up here, and focused hard on gently talking Anna through the pain.

It was a revelation to have someone speak that simple, powerful truth into my life. It must have been something I really needed to hear, because I hear Barbara's voice in my head often these days as a parent. I even find myself reflecting that I wish I had heard her advice sooner. When I took Lydia in for her first vaccination, I was literally shaking. My pediatrician growing up was a mean old man who yelled at me, "Stop being a CRY BABY!" when I had shots, so I was extremely tense about Lydia getting shots. The nurse saw how agitated I was and told me that babies can sense their mothers' emotional states and that, frankly, mine was not going to help the shots go well.

Me, with blanky. I want my mommy!

One of my parenting books asserts that the best way to approach discipline is to praise with effusive positive emotion, and to correct with a calm demeanor showing no anger. What they really should say is that in order to discipline, you have to be the grown up here. As the parent, I am supposed to be the one that has grown in emotional and spiritual maturity enough to not make the situation all about me. I need to have the fruit of the spirit - peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control and love. But much of the time, I find myself wanting to run to my own mommy and pout. It turns out that the Toys R Us jingle was true - I don't wanna grow up. Romans 7 has taken on a whole new meaning to me as I work through motherhood.


Barbara's rebuke has become an important mom mantra (momtra!). Lydia is at the age where she is really beginning to push boundaries and assert her independence. When Lydia is having a tantrum or says the hurtful things typical toddlers do, my brain screams at me, "You have to be the grown up here!" If I want my children to grow up to be emotionally mature, loving adults some day, I guess I have to start by modeling what that looks like by being that person myself as their mother.