My 2 Greatest Achievements as a Mother (so far)

On Mondays I blog about Marriage or Motherhood. Since I have 5 children and only 1 husband,  I mostly blog about Motherhood.

Motherhood isn’t a job that gives you instant gratification.

For the most part, most of what you say, do, and instill in your children won’t really matter until they leave your nest.  This can be hard, especially on the hardest days when you feel no one is listening as you repeat yourself for the tenth (thousandth) time.

On those days I choose to focus on what I call milestone achievements.

While society would tell me that my ‘work’ doesn’t matter or that it isn’t a worthy enough contribution to society or womanhood, I focus on the buds sprouting in the lives of my family and our children.

My two greatest achievements as a mother

 

1. My children have a love of reading

I taught our four oldest children to read.  I witnessed the first words and the first book they’ve ever read on their own and I feel blessed to have done so.

There isn’t a day that goes by that they cannot be found reading, or a night that we don’t have to turn off the lights and pry the books out of their hands.

All those nights I read to them, when it would have been so much easier just to tuck them into bed. It wasn’t in vain.

2. My Children are Friends

People from large families always say what a gift it is to be from a large family.  That there is nothing like the holidays with a roomful of siblings.  But that’s taking for-granted that the siblings all get along.  Not all families are close-knit.

Not all siblings get along.

I love that our children are friends. They actually like each other.  I might even venture to say that more often than not, they prefer one another.

When the Road Warrior and I became parents it was important to us that our children were close.  When we are gone from this earth they will still have each other.

We decided to be intentional about this goal, instead of just hoping for the best.  We felt the way to do this was to not play favorites.  Neither of us has a favorite child. 

When parents play favorites they allow seeds of resentment to grow in the heart(s) of the unfavored as they compete for attention or praise.  We make sure our kids never feel they are in competition with one another.

We don’t encourage or condone them tattling on one another.  We don’t compare them to one another.

We give them room to like each other.

While our children certainly have outside friendships, it’s true they spend the majority of time with each other.  This is mostly because they are homeschooled, but whenever I hear criticism about this fact, I think the same thing:  You could do a lot worse than having your brother or sister be your best friend in this life.

 

What would you say are your two greatest achievements as a mother?