You Decide!

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I think motherhood is infamous for being an emotional roller coaster, especially for a new mom and/or first time mom. No one’s experiences look exactly like the other, but I am confident that many of us have experienced our fair share of drama tied in with numerous levels of joy. Honestly, I can go from feeling frustration and anxiety because my kid doesn’t want to eat his delicious lunch (delicious of course because I made it) to laughing hysterically because somehow he thought he could use the itty bitty space under the playpen as a tunnel (this kid – so adventurous!). 

Here’s a good one: going from stressed out because somehow he thinks that we were meant to be siamese twins to feeling amazed when he tells me: “ba ba ba da da da a e a e….yeah yeah yea (all with the wrist twisting hand gestures)” Translation: “I told you that I just wanted to press the button on daddy’s xbox. So stop telling me ‘No, don’t touch’.” I feel like I can totally read his mind sometimes and believing I can, I say, “Is that so Aaron?” He then responds with the same phrase. I have quite the conversationalist on my hands.

One emotion I know we mommies have to have in common are feelings of failure. It’s that sneaky little emotion that creeps up on you when you really wanted your child to be breastfed and breastfeeding is not working out as you intended or when your child happens to show you a new trick and rolls off the bed and onto the floor. Let me tell you, that it’s horrifying when your child is screaming at the top of his/her lungs simply because you diverted your attention else where for a split second.

Recently for me, it has been the attempt to potty train my one year old. Yes, I said it. Every time I tell someone that I’m attempting to potty train a one year old, the reaction is a look of sheer bewilderment. 

Well considering that I was completely tired of buying disposable diapers and of washing cloth diapers, all I could think about was how much money I would save and the less time I would spend on washing. To top it off, I found out that people were starting to train their kids as young as 4 months old. Now whose the crazy one?! If people can do it at 4 months, surely I can do it at 1 year (piece of cake!)

Well, I started the potty training journey on July 14, 2014 and decided to end (aka take a break) on July 26th (12 whole days).

There were days he seemed to be getting it and plenty of other days…well let’s just say cleaning up poop off the floor and stepping in pee was becoming a little too regular. I started out happy go lucky and excited. “We are going to do this thing!”

However, after 7 days and no progress, I began to get frustrated and stressed out. Why isn’t he getting it? I kept asking myself what I was doing wrong. My husband (being the awesome husband he is) reminded me to be patient and that he will get it and that these things take time. That awesome encouragement worked for nothing short of a couple of days when progress looked like regression.

I’ve always been an attempted perfectionist (if that makes any sense). I’m choosing not to use the word perfectionist because we are only perfect in Christ and any man’s attempt to be perfect is drawing from the best of our abilities. But thats neither here nor there. Its that attempted perfectionist spirit that made me beat myself up even harder. Come on Normel, its only potty training. Actually, NO it’s not just potty training!

I realized that it stemmed from how I once felt like a failure at life. When I finally figured out what I wanted to do with my life and pursued and obtained a Masters degree, I saw that despite that degree and my previous background, no one wanted to hire me. Its amazing how rejection after rejection after rejection after rejection….(should I continue?)….after rejection, can have an affect on the way you once thought about yourself. I started out thinking: “Im smart, I’m skilled, I learn quickly, I’m organized, I can do anything I put my mind to.” But the experience of continual rejection ate up every bit of that and was diminished to: “Maybe I can’t do this, maybe I’m not as smart as I thought I was, maybe I’m not as skilled as I thought I was.”

These thoughts stopped being a surface issue and I just began to focus on the things that I knew I ought to be grateful to have and I reminded myself that God was going to make everything that I’ve learned and acquired come together and make sense some day. It stopped being a reoccurring thought and as if it still were, God tells me recently that I am not a failure. “What? That was random Lord.”

And, literally days later, my Pastor, Ernst Cochy says the very same thing at the end of service to the entire congregation. That touched my heart. It was even better to know that even in my choice to not entertain such a thought, somewhere deep inside God saw a seed of doubt and I’m ever so glad that he stopped that seed from growing into something so ugly that I could have just hated what I saw in the mirror.

If I had to ask myself the question: “Failure or Not?” The answer is NOT! (in the most obnoxious 10 year old voice you could think of)

My advice to those feeling like they are failures, YOU HAVE TO DECIDE to do the following:

1. Create your own standards. When it appears you are not making progress, trust me, you are!
2. Stop comparing yourself to a life that appears to be so wonderful on Facebook or any other form of social media
3. Reflect on your accomplishments and work hard to do even more and to learn even more
4. When frustration hits, just take a break and revisit on a fresh mind. The consequences of frustration will only slow you down

Just because we fail at certain things or make mistakes, it doesn’t mean that you are a failure. It just means that you have to make some adjustments in your life and keeping pushing forward. 

On July 27th, I concluded that no consistent progress was being made with the potty training and decided to take a break and return to the process once I finished reading EC Simplified (a book on potty training at early ages). Sometimes we need to step back, reflect and then return to the process. 

Wife to an amazing husband, mother to an exploring toddler and an MPA graduate aspiring to impact the world with encouragement in mothering and in social entrepreneurship.

2 Comments

  • Vanessa

    August 9, 2014 at 3:39 pm

    Normel, this is so powerful; even for non-mothers (or yet-to-become mothers). Thank you for the reminder to create our own standards and to reflect on how far we’ve come, though it may not be quite were we want to ultimately end up in the long run. All a process, right? I have to remind myself that the baby steps do add up…

    Thanks again!

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