The UN-Super Mom

Recently I read a blog entry from one of those earthy, boho, environmentally focused, Waldorf toy, organic everything, whole foods cooking, expert sewing, and knit 3 sweaters in a day moms. I call her Super Organic Mom. It certainly has been on my mind.

I find I am reading a lot more blogs from this type of Super Organic Mom...you know...with those abstract-ish photos that blow your mind and make you feel the emotion of motherhood, and feel as though you are there getting splashed in the face with the mud the toddler is refluxing off his/her rain boots. It kind of takes me away to a la-la-land of the kind of home environment I wish I could execute.

The blog entry came as a shock to me, however. Because she clearly had suffered and lamented a decision that would affect her kids in a gi-normas way. It wasn't a new sibling, an adoption, a move across the country, mom going to work, Dad changing careers and going back to school. It was none of those things we think that would rock a kids' world and put a mother at such a state of unrest.

It was plastic. Yes, plastic.

She suffered over giving her kids a set of plastic toys. In her Waldorf house, no less. I could feel the emotion as she was almost apologetic to the reader, admitting a horrible failure. Plastic. Toys. Oh, probably BPA friendly or maybe not...but plastic?

Her message was that sometimes we just have to let go....let go of the stringent, unrealistic expectations we have for ourselves as parents. Sometimes we hyperfocus on the minute and make it extreme. Like giving a 3 year old a 7 minute lecture on the criminal future for any child who plays with a nerf gun, instead of just saying, "Lets pick something else." We are force-fed a constant diet of the Perfect Parent, and keeping up with the "Dos" turns into admonishing the kids and preaching to the mothers with less fortitude and earth consienceness about the "Dont's."

That is what Super Organic Mom was getting at....we can turn our idealism into a very unrealistic legalism. In my childhood, it was apparel, hair, jewelry and makeup. I grew up conservative and all I heard was "no pants for girls, no jewelry, no makeup, hair must be long, etc." I'm not saying that lifestyle is bad, but the emphasis was on the rules of the exterior, not on the condition of the heart before God. Its like going through rituals without any focus on the One we worship.

Poor Super Organic Mom...there was grief I could feel in the post as she said she had to let some things go, to set aside such high expectations for herself and just let her kids live. Again, this was over plastic.

I so identified with that. It almost seems silly there would be such soul searching and lamentation over a set of TOYS, but to her it was a burden. Certainly she is not dropping all of her ideals, her garden, her hand-dyed wool imported from Scotland. It was one little concession.

I get this. I find inspiration in the blogs of Super Organic Moms, and sometimes some humor because it can seem so staged. But I am so not SOM. I'm the unperfect mom. I'm me.

I've let go of quite a bit of things recently...not because I dropped my conscience on its head or changed my ideals. Just because it is best for my family. Everything in moderation. The message I got from Super Organic Mom was there is such a thing as too much perfect...at least the burden of that"perfect" image and lifestyle.

What have I dropped lately?

Well, I'm not consistent in cloth diapering, and yes, I hate putting paper on the butts of my 3 tots, but...it is what it is.

The biggie I have let go of is homeschooling my teenagers. There comes a point where in the quest to do it all, I have neglected to give the teens the very best education they deserve. I want the best for them, not mediocre and not "Ok, when the therapist leaves and it is naptime, I'll teach you Order of Operations and Sentence Diagramming." Unquestionably having 3 kids right at age 3 is busy and challenging. Throw in special needs and specialists and therapy in the home up to 7 times a week, and naturally, I didn't have 8 hours a day to teach my teenagers. We were getting by, but with a lot of frustration for all of us.

So I woke up one morning and called a charter school. And they have been in school for 2 weeks and L*O*V*E it. My desire is to home teach, to sit around the fire under quilts with all of my children and read the classics to them while they all knit or whittle wood. The reality was 2 teens upstairs having their computer program teach and score and test them while I was downstairs with 3 therapists and 3 tots on the floor going over their new sensory diets.

Can I just tell you how much of a burden this has lifted for all of us? It isn't that I am throwing them away. I am giving them the gift of a quiet study environment, a capable and available teacher, higher expecations, and a future. They L*O*V*E it.

So here I sit on my bed late at night with my knitting beside me. Its acrylic, not imported organic hand-dyed wool. And I will probably scrap this project, pull out all my stitches and start something else. And guess what? That's okay.