Motherhood Is About Guiding and Educating Our Children

Motherhood isn't just about giving birth to your children, or raising them. It's about guiding, educating, loving and respecting them, and building their confidence.

If you are a mom, you are already aware that motherhood involves much more than just giving birth. One of our many jobs as mothers is guiding and educating our children.

After all, it is from us that our little ones normally learn their first words and how to put them together, which is why our first language is called our mother tongue.

In general, mothers spend more time with children than fathers, and tend to be their first teachers and figures of authority.

What does it mean to be a mother?

Being a mother is not something that requires qualifications or experience. Let’s be realistic: children don’t come with an instruction manual.

Nobody is truly prepared for motherhood. Does this mean you should be scared of the idea of being a mother? Of course not.

The experiences of every woman, of every mother, are personal and incomparable. But with or without a partner, biological or adoptive, a mother is a mother all the same.

Being a mother means more than just giving birth to a child. It means sleepless nights and endless worries. Hours of running around after your children.

Days, months and years spent inventing new ways to camouflage vegetables. It means putting up with every fight, and taking all the infinite setbacks that life throws at you with the patience of a saint.

Guiding and educating our children is one of the most difficult tasks that mothers face. And, although there are no magic solutions, there is some key advice to take into account. It’s never too early to be an example to your child.

Guiding and educating your children

Here are a few useful tips:

• You should take care of yourself in order to take care of your child. If you are in a bad state, that will affect your mood, and can impact the wellbeing of your baby.
• Learn to manage your stress. Understand that you can’t do everything perfectly.
• Whether well-meaning or not, don’t let other people tell you how to live your life or raise your child.
• Learn to organize yourself to make the best use of the little time you have available.
• Children need to feel secure, whatever the circumstances. They need to know that, despite life’s challenges, their mother will always be there for them. Trust between a mother and her children is crucial. Having confidence in them will teach them to have productive and positive relationships with you and others around them.
• Be a good example as a mother, a woman and a friend to your child.
• From early on, teach them principles and moral values.
• Establish rules at home, and expect your children to follow them.
• On the practical side of things, try to get a life insurance policy naming your child as the beneficiary. Choose a person you trust to be their legal guardian should anything happen to you. Put everything down in writing, preferably in the presence of a notary or lawyer, to ensure that nobody can take advantage of your child.
• Above all, be patient.

Children learn from our example, so it is vital to practice what you preach, and behave as you expect them to. Mothers are a crucial influence in our children‘s lives.

The most important thing that mothers can do is to love our children unconditionally. It is not enough just to feel this. We have to express it with words, with deeds and with physical displays of affection.

A kiss, a hug and an “I love you” are much-needed tools to raise secure and compassionate human beings, who will one day be good mothers or fathers.

Finally, understand that being a mother and succeeding in the vital task of guiding and educating your child, you will need strength of character, authority, courage and responsibility.

Don’t see obstacles as problems, but challenges to be overcome.