What to do When You Don’t Love Your Mom Life
First I want to say that I love being a mom. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. However, there are days and weeks when life just isn’t working for our family. So while I love being a mom I don’t always love the mom life. I don’t always like how our life looks and when that feeling becomes overwhelming I know it is time to make some changes.
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Evaluate:
My first step is always to evaluate what the source of my stress is. Personally, I don’t have a large capacity for being busy. When I am overwhelmed it is almost always related to how full the calendar is.
Maybe busyness isn’t your issue. Is it the way a particular child is behaving. Are you overwhelmed by the state of your house. Do you find yourself home-bound? Do you need more social interaction? Do you need more structure? Whatever is causing your dissatisfaction with your mom life it is important to identify it. You can’t make any changes if you don’t know what needs to change!
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Pray:
Don’t forget to pray about it. Ask God to help you prioritize. Ask for grace to handle this stage of life. Maybe nothing needs to change but your own attitude (been there before).
Time Alone:
Do you get enough time alone? It is so easy to get caught up in meeting everyone elses needs and ignore our own. After all, there is always going to be someone who needs something from you. Or laundry to do, or dishes to be washed, and on and on it goes.
As a mom if you are always giving and never recharging you are going to burn out. When my children were young my husband was always agreeable to me taking a day to spend with my friends. Sometimes though I just wanted to be home by myself and that rarely happened.
Now that my kids are older and in school I get time at home alone during the day. Funny thing is I find myself missing them! Figure out what you need and what works for you. Maybe a 20 minute recharge in the evening is all you need.
Communicate:
Communicate with your spouse. As much as I would like my husband to be a mind reader he still hasn’t mastered that skill after 20 years of marriage. If I don’t like how life looks I need to communicate with him what I need.
When our kids were little I asked him to take over the bed-time routine. Is there a chore or kid related task that your husband can help you with? Let him know. I highly recommend not starting a conversation with the phrase “Normal dads do…” From experience I can tell you it won’t go well. (ha ha, living and learning over here at my house)
The Power of NO:
As I said before, my biggest source of stress is being too busy. One of the hardest lessons I have learned is how to say “NO”!
Sometimes it is outside people asking for me to commit my time to their cause and sometimes it is my kids who need to be told no. I want my kids to have the good things in life. Music and gymnastics, special outings, play dates, movies and the list goes on and on. I’ve learned that sometimes you have to say no to good things to keep your life peaceful.
My kids have surprised me in this area. When I have said a firm “no” or “that won’t work for me today” they have accepted it gracefully. I believe the problem is that I don’t always say “no” firmly. As for outside people asking for my time, I’m getting better at saying no to the things that won’t add value to my life and the life of my family.
Check out Amazon Family. It is a great program that can save you time by delivering products like diapers right to your front door!
Make time for your spouse:
One big challenge for myself and I believe many couples with kids is making time for your spouse. With older kids in the house we are busier than ever. Bedtimes are later because my kids are either in their teens or approaching the teen years.
We are busy with sports and 4-H so when I have a free night I just want to be at home. Because the kids are older they don’t get invited to do overnights at Grandparents as often so my husband and I are not home alone much anymore.
When I find myself not loving my mom life it often coincides with longing for time alone with my husband. Falling asleep on the couch watching TV just doesn’t cut it as quality time! This area of life takes a lot of intentional planning for me. I have started sending my oldest to his room as soon as his dad is ready to sit down with me in the evenings. He doesn’t love this but after a few nights he starting going on his own.
I hope I am showing both my husband and my son that time with my husband is a priority. I think we need to connect with our spouse to be a better wife and mom.
Set Goals:
Lastly, if you are not loving the mom life maybe it’s time to set some family goals.After you have evaluated what is causing you to be dissatisfied it’s time to figure out how to change it.
At our house one of my goals is getting the kids to be more responsible. As I mentioned in my post “9 Things Tweens/Teens Should Be Doing On Their Own” I handed over laundry to my older kids and that was a game changer! It took the chore off of my plate but also removed some of the attitudes I was dealing with! Some of my other goals have included having the kids cook on Sundays, doing the clean-up after dinner, and spending less time on the TV/computer.
Setting goals gives you a vision to work toward and motivation to keep going.
I hope some of these ideas are helpful. Life isn’t fun when you are stressed and overwhelmed. As I wrote this I realized I need to go back and take some of these steps again. Kids grow up too fast, I want to enjoy as much of motherhood as I can while I still have them at home.
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