The words we parents need to hear: You Are Enough.

So the other day, I was brought to tears.

It wasn’t the usual mom-frustration or mom-overwhelm that did it (though make no mistake, these feelings have brought me to tears as well).

Nor were these tears from the stabbing pain of an unseen lego suddenly implanted in the ball of my foot either.

No, these were tears from the rarest of rare words spoken to me. Words that are so infrequently uttered, yet words that we so desperately need to hear.

The Sweetest Words

I was talking with some ladies, both younger than me, neither of whom are moms yet. As we talked, we became a bit candid with our hopes and fears and found that although we were at very different stages of our lives. We shared quite a bit in common with our upbringings and outlook on life.

It was was great to connect with them, find some common ground, bond a little, if you will.

But as we were nearing the end of our conversation, one of the ladies, though not yet a mom herself, spoke the sweetest, kindest words that brought me to tears.

She said: Kathleen, the way you break things down and use metaphors to describe things, I don’t know your kids, but I can tell, you are a good mom.

Instant lump in the throat.

Seriously, fellow moms, when is the last time anyone ever told you sincerely and completely unsolicited “you are a good mom”?

Never? I can’t think of a time either.

Later that night, I told my husband about the conversation. I looked him right in the eyes and said “seriously, when is the last time anyone ever told you ‘you are a good dad’ ?”

He got the same teary look in his eyes as I had.

Because it struck a chord. And because the answer for him was also: Never.

It got me thinking. Why are these words so powerful? Why did hearing them bring us both to near instant tears?

What it means.

I’ll tell you my theory: Parenting. Is. Tough. And we don’t get any directions, instructions, reports, or analytics to help us know if we are on the right path. There are no grades or mid-year evaluations on parenting. There is no boss or coach or teacher of parenting to help determine if we‘ve done enough. No one tells us if we’ve said the right things or made the right choices. There are no annual raises and no real benchmarks in parenting to help reassure us that we are on the right track. 

Yet it is a “job” that has more hours, more work, and more ups and downs and twists and turns than any other.

And it seems the closest (and only?) external form of reassurance we parents get is in our children’s successes. Their success on the ball field. Their success in the classroom. That’s really all we parents get as any sort of indication that we are doing okay as parents.

But in my opinion, their success is light years away from a true measure of our parenting success.

When we get right down to it, is their success on the field or in the classroom really what we parents longing for?

I mean, of course we want them to succeed.

But I think what we parents really want (or at least what I really want most days) is to know that they’re okay.

And that I’m okay.

That I’m a good mom. That I’m enough.

The very fact that you worry about being a good mom