The word best has been wrangling in my head since the moment I realized I will be a mom. I believe most of you who have gone through this phase will relate to it that during the course of your pregnancy you are filled with the happiness full of curiosity that how beautiful the experience of parenting would be. But along with this curappiness (curiosity + happiness, just invented this word 😉 ) there is also a self imposed expectation that we inherit, and that is that we need to be “The Best” for our kid. I was experiencing the same set of emotions of doing and giving the best to my kid all throughout my pregnancy. But this emotion soon translated into a commotion in my brain, and in this blog I take you through this relatable journey, so just fasten your seat belt. 

I decided to be a full time mom, sometimes I feel is it even possible to be a part time one. But anyways, I decided to be a full time mom, be there and give the “Best” to my new born. Soon, I realized that it is not a sprint, but a marathon and if you run a marathon with the mindset of a sprint you will soon run out of stamina. And the burden of being and giving the “Best” does exactly this to your psychology. This weight of expectation was shattering the entire fantasy of parenting being a beautiful experience. I could see irritation and anger creeping into my day to day behavior and  I started questioning myself and felt cheated or wronged that my entire dream of parenting is turning into an irritating nightmare. Guess what was the culprit ingredient in my recipe, if you haven’t guessed it already it was, the self imposed expectation to be the “Best”.

Believe me, the concoction of sleepless nights, fluctuating hormones and the most dangerous of all the pursuit of being the “Best” parent just makes it difficult and unbearable. You will look for some alone time. And trust me that helps. It is in those moments of solitude that some reflection dawned on me and I realized that I cannot be the all cool poster mom who never gets irritated with or never gets angry on her  child. It lead me to a question, what is the definition of being the “Best” mom or giving the “Best” actually means. So some exploration within and with some observation around, I had a realization. Being or giving the “Best” means different to different people and therefore it is really nothing but our perception. 

So the question is, what we really need to do? You need to be sane and logical with your kids. The image of  mom that is being portrayed everywhere is actually fake and you really need to shatter this into pieces to bring peace to your self. Yes, we are multitaskers and good managers but that does not mean that we cannot make mistakes. Our mistakes just makes us more human and we should accept it with grace. You should stop expecting yourself being loving and all goody goody every single moment, because being a mom is not a one way street. You will have to be strict at times, you will have to be angry, there will be times when you will be irritated and it is perfectly ok to do this and accept it. And to reach this point you will have to give up one thing, that is to give on the false and artificial perception of being the “Best” mom. As by doing this, we will stop forcing or expecting from our kids to be the best. This will release them from the uncalled pressure that there is no scope of being less than the best and therefore, no space for failures. You will start inculcating the acceptance for failures in both yourself and your kids. This no way means that you give up on winning but rather start learning from your failures and teach your kids to start loving and appreciating the journey of learning rather than just living for the achievements.

The other day I was watching this movie Chichore, where it beautifully mentioned a very important point that as parents we always discuss the success with our kids and never the failures. We have great plans for the success but we never make plans for our failures. And this is so true. While talking about success, we only think that our son or daughter is efficient enough to be successful and we have always given our best so our kids should be the best and they cannot fail in anything. Instilling that confidence is good but putting a burden of success on them is a strict no. There can be various reasons which can lead to failure, and in our span of life, we do face it but the sad part is we do not want to talk about it.

And therefore, I decided that the best way to love my child is patting his back when he is doing good but giving him a tight hug when he will do something wrong and tell him that its OK and we all make mistakes and help him embrace failure as he would have embraced success. I scold my son for whatever wrong he does but then I also give him logic behind why it is wrong and that it happens. I also share with him my failures and mistakes just to show him that even we are not perfect and that we always learn from our experience. My understanding of spending quality time with my kid is by listening to all his stories and telling him mine and weave the worldly understanding through these stories. As these stories become strong memories of learning and bonding that will both motivate him to try his best but also comfort him during his failures. At the end what they need is love and the assurance that we are always there to listen and be with them whenever they need us.

So start believing in doing the best you can but not having the expectation laced with burden to be the “Best”. I will close this blog on the note that, just enjoy the journey of being a mom and seeing your child grow. Love him/her unconditionally and free your self from the burden of reaching the destination called “Best”.

lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu..