The View from the Top: A Mother’s Perspective

Often as a parent we worry that we are doing the right things, especially when there are dozens of people who know more about raising our children than we do. I know they do because they constantly point out the mistakes they think I have made, either to my face or behind their hands to someone else. I didn’t consult anyone else when I had them and I saw no reason to consult anyone on how to raise them. I did the best I could with the help of the Lord. Just as I learned as I child, I learned as a parent. Sometimes I made mistakes but overall, I think I did the right things.

Trial and error is the way God designed life. He gave us a map to follow, too. However, I know for a fact that there are a lot of folks out there who can’t fold a map, let alone read one. But there is always someone out there who would have me think that they are the only one who can read the map correctly.

Mama taught me that the best teacher is the Word and experience, with experience often making a believer in the Word. She would tell me how I should do but then she let me decide what I would do. She always warned me in advance, “You know what is right because I have told you. If you chose to do something else, you will be accountable for the consequences.” Most of the time, after a lot of thought but sometimes after experience, I would agree with her. For those times when I didn’t, I often regretted it.

With my own children I learned the wisdom of that. When they were little I could pick the boys up and put them where I wanted them and order them to stay. Usually they did. Once they become thinking, reasoning beings of size that became impossible. Ordering around a 200-pound male is much the same as ordering the refrigerator. You either have to move them physically, or you have to out think them. There is no need to hurt myself just to make a point.

So, there have been a lot of times that I let my sons do things that a lot of parents would try and prevent their children from doing. Why? Because, nothing I said would sway them if they really wanted to do it. I always, then and now, give them the facts as I see them, I tell them what the Bible says, and let them decide. Your children are a lot more intelligent that you think. I wish I had a dime for every time one of my sons said, “You were right, Mom.” I would have retired years ago! I strongly recommend that parents of very young children start collecting dimes now; you won’t regret it. Of course, you will have to give them the dimes!

Truthfully, most of us failed self-control 101. It is a skill that the majority of children never learn until they are 40. We usually repeat the class several times before we get it. I think my boys have repeated that class a total of 9490 and 7665 times respectively. To the math challenged, that is once a day. They would have repeated it more but it was too much work.

When my sons were small, I always tried to view things as they would see it. I would get down on the floor and play with them when they were crawling, looking under tables and through chair rungs to see the world the way they saw it. I watched for things that could hurt them that I would not normally see on my own level. As they grew I continued to get on their level, looking through the heartaches of broken and lost toys, skinned knees, bruised shins, failed drivers tests, lost first loves and broken friendships. I looked through the ridicule, mockery, and intolerance of the masses. When they became “adults” I still tried to see through their eyes only to find that now they towered over me and it was they who could not see from my perspective. And they lacked the wisdom to realize it.

It is a hard lesson for a parent to realize that all the years spent binding up wounds and kissing away hurts will probably never be repaid until after you are gone. And yet, I would do it a thousand times over to have the joy of bright blue eyes smiling up at me, of wet, sticky kisses, of tiny hands patting my cheek, and fat little arms wrapping tightly around my neck and cutting off my air. I would stand over a thousand emergency room beds and watch stitches put in heads, packed broken noses, and bandaged broken arms. I would do it again for all the tickle giggles, chocolate smiles, and bedtime stories.

I looked across my backyard last week and for just a minute, I saw two little blonde boys racing across the yard, their laughter echoing through time. There is no greater heartache than that of being a mother. And no greater joy.