Here's to coming out on top instead of becoming a mom at her wits' end!

It's obvious: being a mom 2.0 is a particularly hard job, one that forces us to work with real zeal. For all sorts of reasons, the role of mother has become more complex over time and I understand that most of us can, at times, feel overwhelmed. What if we managed to paint our family life, our kids and our partner in a more optimistic light? It seems to me we'd start to see life from a different angle!

I wish us the strength to overcome our frustrations.

Author Nadine Bismuth put it well in her latest novel, “Un lien familial” (“A Family Bond”). I'd like to borrow her words because I couldn't say it better. She writes: “Perhaps that's what growing older is: realizing that nothing is ideal, swallowing your whims and expectations, forgetting your needs in favour of those of others. For there is no doubt that my family is now an entity bigger than me: it is a cell that takes over my desires and absorbs my whole person.”

It's undeniable, parenting comes with its share of difficulties and frustrations! I wish us the ability to overcome them, or at least to manage to minimize them. In a parent's life, there are a multitude of very simple little joys to hold on to. You still have to be able to spot them and see the forest for the trees. Here's a trick to try: when your mom duties get to be too much, turn on your phone and take a look at the tons of photos and videos of your kids. There are tons of these little scraps of happiness on our phones! These images of our family life are nothing but happy moments, milestones, little landmarks for the times when things are harder. Watching a video of your daughter singing at the top of her lungs in her undies and sunglasses, standing on a kitchen chair, and reliving that moment, it makes you smile! It helps you forgive her for the mess she made in the living room. It motivates you to start the washing machine for the second time that day and to run the vacuum before going to bed.

I wish us the strength to overcome rigidity.

Sometimes the line is thin between everything being fine and everything falling apart. There are those days when you picture what the day will look like and then circumstances (or rather the kids!) decide otherwise. Having worked for several years as an elementary school teacher, I came to understand that working with little humans means having to be ready to change the plans at any moment. We had planned a nice pad thai for dinner, but ever since they got home from school, the two oldest have done nothing but bicker and the youngest keeps asking to be held non-stop. Will you dare serve them a few veggies and a peanut butter sandwich? Sometimes it's wiser to put the focus on what matters most. When you need a lot of energy to discipline your kids and keep order, you have less left for everything else.

I wish us the strength to overcome negative social pressure.

It's a fact, our house has to be clean, but it doesn't have to be Pinterest-perfect. It's a fact, our kids need to be stimulated, but they don't have to take swimming, yoga, painting, hockey and piano lessons all at once. It's a fact, our kids have to eat vegetables, but those vegetables don't have to be cut into stars for us to feel like a good mom. Yes, we want to be women too, but our nails can stay natural. Ideally, we need to stay in shape, but we don't need to become a fitness mom. I wish us to put our energy in the right place and to stop scattering ourselves among futile details. In 2019, we focus on what matters most to us, we declutter our schedules and we get rid of the frivolous stuff that, deep down, brings us very little.

I wish us the strength to overcome the mental load, at least a little.

We talk about moms' mental load and we often portray dads as incapable. We blame them for a lack of involvement and resourcefulness. What if, in 2019, we truly gave them the chance to take their place in the family? What if we delegated some things to them, without standing over them to make sure everything was done just the way we would have done it, by our standards? Dads have a different outlook on family life. They carry out tasks with a certain amount of letting go, and we should sometimes take inspiration from that. The kids can also take part in family life and lighten the burden weighing on our shoulders. I wish us to cultivate team spirit within our family.

I wish us the strength to overcome the “I'm at my wits' end and I own it” phenomenon.

All moms agree that keeping a house clean when you have kids is a pain, that our floors are sometimes dirtier than they should be. We certainly all agree that arguing with a child so that they'll stay in bed once and for all at night is exasperating. Of course, we often need to vent and look for a little solidarity among other moms. However, don't you think quotes from parents at the end of their rope are a bit too present on social media? Isn't it a shame to give so much room to the negative sides of parenting? With a little effort, we could restore some shine to the image of parenting and give it back its good name. At Les Belles Combines, in 2019, we're going to try to plant little seeds of positivity among moms. We'll do everything we can to help you test solutions and feel competent in your role as a mother. We'll put all our energy into helping you manage your time better and get the other members of the family to take on responsibility! And you'll see… together, we'll come out on top!