Ten Things I Would Tell my Younger Mother Self

I was delighted to see a post on Facebook from an old friend yesterday – her daughter has just got an unconditional offer for the degree course of her dreams and I text her straight away because although she was over the moon, I knew her heart would be breaking at the thought of her child leaving home.  I thought of the days spent sweeping at seaweed in rock pools – her daughter holding the bucket, my son with the net.  I thought of ice cream, tractor rides, warm grass and laughing with my good friend at another sleepless night, another pair of jeans ruined, another potty training accident and I shed a quiet tear myself.  Another two years and my own nest could start emptying.

Those early days were a shared experience: my friend and I made our mistakes together.  We worked our way through as best we could, bouncing ideas off each other.

With this on my mind, I woke early this morning to the sound of the birds.  The sun not yet quite up, I remembered doing the same many years ago, nested with my son when he was just a few weeks old.  I thought what I would tell the 24 year old me – my eyes at once wide with new experience and heavy from sleep deprivation.  This is what I came up with:

1. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Breastfeeding is an amazing experience, challenging at times and not possible for everyone but it is probably one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. It seems distant and not entirely relevant, however, when your child is 16 and you are supporting them through their exams/girl trouble/learning how to be a man. It’s all about perspective.
2. Sweat the small stuff. I remember one afternoon after watching the full solar eclipse over Falmouth harbour, I climbed down off Trefusis fields with my baby son on my back and drove home to our little house when all my childless friends were going out to party. I felt so left out. I spent the afternoon listening to old U2 albums and my son slept, fed, smiled and slept. I wouldn’t have remembered the pub crawl I would have done with my friends but the human warmth of that afternoon will never leave me.
3. Feel okay doing things your way. Be a magpie in collecting shiny pieces of advice from younger and older people, magazines, professionals and the T.V. but go with what your heart tells you is best. Utterly exhausted, I finally conceded to combining bottle and breastfeeding one afternoon at the suggestion of a close friend, despite the misgivings of my health visitor. It was the best thing I could have done for my mental and physical health at the time.
4. Give yourself permission to enjoy the now. Days blend into weeks, into months, into years. So many advice columns console parents with lines like ‘this phase won’t last’. Don’t be too eager to look for the next stage, it will come in its own time without you hastening it. It’s exhausting but the early days will become a memory sooner than you think.

5. 

   The talking, playing and sharing will pay off. I always had a strong feeling that these were more important than keeping an immaculate house or flattening laundered clothes. As a working single Mum, I had a busy schedule but when my son was a toddler, I instinctively knew that when he became difficult to handle, what he needed was for me to sit on the floor and drag the toybox out. We’d watch Top Gear and build train tracks that snaked through the living room and out into the kitchen, under the dining table chairs. Now that my children are older, my role is transforming from carer to mentor. I had no idea just how much easier I had made this by securing good lines of communication when they were learning how to talk and trust.

6. Never let anyone else demean what you are doing. When I was at work, I was at work: there were those who wondered why a woman would leave her three month old son to go spend the day in an office. At the time, I would have lost my home, my car and essentially my life if I did not go back to work after the end of my maternity leave (which was a matter of weeks back then) but I also went back to the office because I needed some time to stretch my brain, learn new skills and talk to other adults. This was ok. So was turning down a full-time job when my son turned five. At the time, he needed me to be there every day to pick him up from school. I still stand by that decision now.
7. Having a second child doesn’t take love away from the first, it multiplies it. My son’s father was at first worried when he heard I was pregnant by my second husband, worried that his boy would not receive the same level of attention or love anymore. (My ex now takes my daughter out for milkshake and they sing daft songs together, so all is well.) With a nine year gap between my kids, my son has learnt skills that he could not have acquired anywhere else, not to mention the adoration he gets from his little sister. I have had the joy of watching the two people I created mesh a relationship that will likely last longer than I will.
8. Children are loud and they run around. Of course, they need to learn appropriate behaviour and speech but this is a long term project. Broken kids make for broken adults. As long as you have the situation in hand, let the tutters tut – their discomfort is not your problem: it’s theirs.
9. It’s ok to compare your children. I’m not talking in a competitive way here but they are individuals and what worked for one might not work for another. They have their own unique skills and challenges: talents that seem to crawl out of the woodwork unexpected and quirks that are a reflection of the ones you’ve spent your lifetime dealing with. Siblings can be encouraged to learn from each other’s strengths and provide support for their challenges because one day you won’t be around to perform this task anymore but first, they need the tools to find out what these are.
10. You can choose to replicate your own childhood environment or re-evaluate it. Deepening the coastal shelf (to quote Phillip Larkin) isn’t necessarily inevitable. There is always time to change the way you think.

I think the most important thing I needed as a young mother was confidence.  This, of course, comes with age through the media of hindsight, perspective and experience but I’m glad I launched unimpeded by fear into parenthood – and that was my youth at work.

What would you add to the list?

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