I have dedicated six years of my life to studying children: how they learn, how they behave, how they think. I have been a teacher in three different schools, in two different states, and worked with children of all learning styles from preschool to 12th grade. Being a special education major, most of my schooling was learning about the different ways to reach children academically and socially and how to implement different interventions when the traditional teaching methods don’t work. In theory, I should be able to take all of my learning and translate it to my own child and have a squared away house, right?! HA!
I was venting to another mama about my almost two-year-old, Harper, throwing things, hitting, and doing all those wonderful toddler behaviors that moms love *insert eye roll*. She responded with, “well those are all typical behaviors for where she’s at developmentally.” I know she meant to be helpful but, in that moment, I wanted to crawl under a rock. I know that these actions are appropriate. I know that she isn’t being bad. I know she is just being a one year old. I even know how I should respond to these actions. But that was the first moment that my blinders were taken off and I realized that I was not translating my knowledge and classroom practices to my daughter and her behaviors at home.
The second eye-opening moment was when I was on the phone with my best friend. We were chatting about said toddler behaviors and she asked me what consequences Harper has. I was completely dumbfounded with no answer to her question. Don’t get me wrong, my house isn’t a complete free for all with Harper climbing up curtains or anything (for the most part) but there really aren’t any set expectations either. When I was a teacher I ran my classroom very efficiently: if you do this, this will happen. Like Newton’s law: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So, why was that not the case in my house?! Why is it that I have always prided myself on behavior management in the classroom but feel like a chicken running with my head cut off at my house?! Why am I so confident as a teacher but feel completely lost as a mother?!
When I am in the classroom, I am a teacher. All my other titles do not matter as much. Everything I have is given to those developing minds sitting in the desks in front of me. When a child is having a temper tantrum, I can sit and wait it out for 30 minutes and never lose my cool once. When Harper is having a temper tantrum, I usually have about two minutes before I snap. I’ve come to realize that it is because, being a stay-at-home mom, I have many titles to bear all at one time. I am to be a mom, wife, cook, and housekeeper, while still remembering to be Samantha also.
When I was teaching, I could use all the patience in my repertoire then come home and decompress. Now, decompression doesn’t occur until at least 6:30pm when my daughter goes to sleep and that is if I don’t have anything else to catch up on. And then I only have two hours of “me” time, if I’m lucky, before I go to bed and rest up before the next day. Not only does my patience level need to stretch to 12 hours now instead of the 6 hours of teaching time but I also lost those weekend breaks, sick days, and vacation days that I could utilize when I was a teacher.
Being a mom is a 24/7 working job so it is no question that I think all moms are superheroes. But since being a stay-at-home mom for almost two years, I have a whole new respect for working moms. You ladies wake up, care for another person (or people), go to work to another set of responsibilities and possibly take care of other people, then come home from work and continue to give. I always thought being a teacher was hard, and it was. But nothing compares to the hardships of motherhood. I was naïve in thinking that I would have an easy time mothering because I had an understanding of children.
Don’t feel too hard on yourself if you are needing to reevaluate your parenting style because no matter how much someone may understand children, we are all learning as we go and just trying to be the best we can for our tiny humans.
