How Do You Do It?!

“How do you do it!?”

As a mom to four young children, I hear this question a lot and my typical response it to give a smile that doesn’t quiet reach my tired eyes and respond, “Poorly.”

Strangers just laugh and shake their head because they think I’m joking, my friends laugh because they know there is nothing funnier than the truth.

But for those of you too polite (or if we’re honest, too scared) to ask this tired mother in yoga pants and a 2-day-old bun how she does it, allow me to enlighten you:

1-Low expectations. I’m serious. You know how people always say the first kid gets handled with white gloves and the subsequent kids get less and less of the VIP treatment? Well, I never really did that. I cleaned my first baby’s dropped paci with my own spit and popped it back in her mouth, I attempted to dress her cute exactly once before she crapped all over the $75 baby dress, and Home Girl definitely never had a baby book. I just didn’t hold myself up to the impossible measures of modern motherhood and so instead I’ve embraced the “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” approach. My kids’ hair gets brushed 4/7 days on a good week, we try to get their teeth brushed once a day and they definitely pick out their own clothes….ain’t nobody got time for that when you’re trying to get 4 kids out the door in the morning. Basically if you think you’re expectations are too high, they probably are, if you think they’re normal, go ahead and knock them down a rung or two past that. 

Lower.

Lower.

Okay, right there.

2-Eat or starve. This one is simple biology, people. When faced with the option to eat brussels sprouts or go hungry, the kid will eat a brussels sprout. Or, if they choose they can go to bed without dinner, they will get nothing to eat until breakfast the next morning, which I guarantee you, they will wolf down with unbridled avarice. I refuse to make anyone special meals because they wanted the curly pasta instead of rice (myself excluded—shout out to the miserable experiment that is Whole30!).    

3-They won’t break. Okay, so technically they CAN break a bone but beyond the inconvenience of schlepping a kid around with crutches, is it really the worst thing? I’d rather deal with my kid’s potential injury and use it as a lesson learned, than walk around with bubble wrap. Real talk? I cannot understand the moms who walk around waiting to catch their precious tea cup at the playground in case of incident... I'm judging them and  I’m working on it—my apologizes to the helicopter parents. In this same spirit, one of my kids ate dirt for a while, I had a 2-year-old stung by a bee and one took a swan dive out of the grocery buggy at Fred Meyers onto the hard, tile floor. While defiantly not my finest parenting hours, they’ve all escaped the incidents relatively unscathed.

4- Chores. We don’t have a set list of daily chores yet (we’re getting there, I’m sure) but in a typical day my kids (5,4 and two 3-year-olds) will help unload the dishwasher, help with laundry, sweep and mop, clear their dishes, feed the dog and pick-up their room. If we’re not in a rush, I’ll even let the big girls pack their own lunches. I’m not here to be their servant, I’m here to be their mother and slicing off the crust of their perfectly proportioned PB&Js is not in the job description.

5-Humility. This one is a toughie but I’m trying. As you can imagine, with 4 small kids my house is chaotic a lot of the time and even though I try not to completely lose my crap on these kids, it happens. But what’s important is going to them and recognizing that screaming at them was wrong and I apologize. I want my kids to be able to admit when they’re wrong and correct their behavior, and how are they going to learn that if I never admit my own mistakes to them? Now, I’m not condoning screaming at your kids—it’s like it says in the Bible, just because Jesus died for our sins, doesn’t mean we have a license to sin; just because it’s a teachable moment doesn’t mean we should scream at our kids. But when you do lose your shit (we all do) it is important to go to them with humility and seek their forgiveness. This serves the dual purpose of modeling good behavior, and validating that they are people like anyone else who deserve the respect of not being screamed at.

And when all else fails, locking them out of the bathroom and drinking s glass of wine while watching Netflix in the bathtub always helps.