We Have Super Powers, We Just Don’t Always Realize It

I remember when I was young enough to still believe my mom had super powers. I have no idea if she actually knew what she was doing, but I was convinced that she was the smartest, strongest mom with special powers for finding anything. To me, my mom was Wonder Woman.

But more recently, it seems that parenting has become less about being superheroes and more about what we are doing wrong. There are so many “help” books available that it can feel overwhelming and frustrating trying to figure out how we “should” be parenting.

Lucky for us, our kids still think we are magical and can do anything and everything, so let’s stop worrying about what we don’t do well and focus on our own super powers (however silly they may seem).

Here’s an example in my own life that helped me realize that maybe I had super powers, too. I’d had an exhausting day both at work and at home that evening with the kids. I was in one of those moods where nothing I did seemed to go right, and everyone was a little cranky by the time bedtime rolled around. As my husband and I were getting ready for bed, I heard my 2-year-old daughter start calling out for me. When I peeked in on her, I could barely keep myself from laughing out loud. She was on her tummy, half-awake, crying, with her arm stuck through the crib railing, her nightgown up around her head, and her naked moon butt poking straight up in the air! She must have been trying to take off her clothes while asleep but gotten frustrated halfway through, and couldn’t fully wake herself up to finish the job.

So I snuck in, adjusted her clothes, and rubbed her back. She quickly stopped crying, fluttered her eyes at me, and whispered, “thank you, Mommy. I love you” and with a sigh of relief rolled over and fell back asleep.

And that was it! Such a simple problem solved. It took almost no effort, but the immediate relief and loving words were so genuine. I patted myself on the back and realized that it’s the small stuff we do every day that makes our kids believe we can achieve the impossible, especially at a young age.

Here are some other super powers I have discovered I possess– once I started looking at things through my kids’ eyes:

Keep Reading at San Francisco Mom’s Blog…

(Originally published on San Francisco Mom’s Blog on October 19, 2016)