For Your Child's Sake, You Cannot Be a Suffering Mother
For the sake of your child, you cannot be a suffering mother, whatever the circumstance or cause. Suffering is not love, and everything that concerns a child must be done with the most platonic love that can ever exist.
For the sake of your child, you have to learn to be a happy, prosperous, encouraging, funny, positive mother… but never one too tame or submissive to your suffering.
For every suffering mother, there is an unhappy child
Not all women know how to assume their role as a mother. Many think that to love their children is to mourn for them and suffer about what could happen to them tomorrow.
Women who feel sorry for their children due to certain physical or mental characteristics, or who are vexed by their economic needs and their frustrated or unattainable desires end up hurting their children and transmitting their pain.
Children have a powerful emotional capacity. They always know when something bad happens, when there is a problem or someone is suffering.
The children of mothers who feel and behave that way are raised with the feeling that they are “less than others” – that there is something wrong with them and that they will be unable to achieve their goals.
Origins of a suffering mother
The origins of becoming a suffering mother are diverse. One reason they mourn is based on their child’s intellectual and physical disabilities.
Women who suffered in their own childhood from emotional abandonment or physical and psychological abuse, who had to sacrifice their youth and dreams to raise an unexpected child, who were deceived and despised for years by their husbands, or who fear future separation from their little ones when they become adults also have reasons to be suffering mothers.
How to not be a suffering mother
To not be a suffering mother, or to at least try to avoid it, follow these tips:
- Never use the words “pity,” “poor thing,” “failure,” “incapable,” or “abandoned” to refer to your child, especially when you think he can hear you.
- Do not pity him. We all have shortcomings, lack something, get sick or do not achieve a dream.
- Take care of him, but do not overprotect him. The life that awaits him is full of countless setbacks that he will have to face whether he wants to or not. There is no point in worrying about what might never happen to him. It’s better to prepare him and yourself just in case he has to face what you fear so much.
- Love him and let him know that love is joy, satisfaction, well-being, optimism…
- Be brave and imposing in the face of difficulties. Your child deserves the best in life, the best you can give him. Strive for it as a mother. When he makes mistakes, gets sick or is afraid is when he needs you the most. Those are the least appropriate times to get depressed, to turn your back and to pass the “problem” on to another member of the household.
- Do not pretend that you will forever be his center of attention, his figure of attachment, for fear that tomorrow he will grow up and abandon you. Avoid raising him in an environment that makes you seem like the most important person.
Self-love, high self-esteem, feelings of satisfaction and rejoicing in their achievements, their abilities and way of being… that is the best inheritance, the most valuable teaching of a mother.
For the sake of your child, take care of your mental health and be happy
Mom, another detail you cannot ignore if you want to avoid being a suffering mother is taking care of your own mental health and emotional well-being.
Stop being the slave who postpones all her dreams for a tomorrow that does not come. Do not be the one who is attentive to others 24/7 but does not excel personally or professionally, does not leave home unless it is to go shopping, does not play sports, does not spend time with her friends…
The self-sacrificing mother is the one most likely to fall into a deep depression that not only harms her, but completely lacerates the rest of the family, the family that depends so much on her.
For the sake of your child and yourself, be happy, as happy and fulfilled as possible.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
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- Bowlby, J. (1995). Teoría del apego. Lebovici, Weil-HalpernF.
- Garrido-Rojas, L. (2006). Apego, emoción y regulación emocional. Implicaciones para la salud. Revista latinoamericana de psicología, 38(3), 493-507. https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/805/80538304.pdf
- Marrone, M., Diamond, N., Juri, L., & Bleichmar, H. (2001). La teoría del apego: un enfoque actual. Madrid: Psimática.
- Moneta, M. (2003). El Apego. Aspectos clínicos y psicobiológicos de la díada madre-hijo. Santiago: Cuatro Vientos.
