It’s Time to Stop Putting on a Good Show

Theres one phrase I’ve heard a lot this year. And it makes me cringe every time. When people find out I have 6 kids, work from home, and homeschool the response is always “You must be supermom!”

And I’m not. I’m REALLY not. But I smile and nod and give them the sugar coated version of my life complete with canned responses about how I manage to do it all.

The truth is I have hard days. We all do. But I’m really good at putting on a good show.

I’ve been proud of that fact. But I’m realizing more and more that it’s not a good thing. What if everyone stopped putting on a good show and was able to admit when they were falling short, admit when they needed a helping hand. How much simpler would life be?

We added twins to our family this year, unexpectedly. I’m not sure you can ever plan on having twins. It’s been an amazing experience and for someone who was once told that I’d never be able to carry a baby past 24 weeks, having two healthy babies at the end of this is something that I feel grateful for every day. But it’s been hard. REALLY hard. Wonderful. But hard.

Earlier last fall another mom told me that she was struggling with just 2 kids and wanted to know how in the world I was managing with 6, including twins.  “You know. It really hasn’t been as hard as I thought it would be.” I told her. “We have a routine and they are easy babies and we’ve done this a few times so we kind of know what we are doing now.”

We left and my husband looked at me and said, “It isn’t that hard?!”

This poor mom had only seen me in public with kids who wore matching clothes and behaved themselves. She didn’t know that the makeup I wore covered bags under my eyes from only averaging 2-4 hours of sleep a night and that my kids were behaving because it was the first time they’d left the house in a week and their clothes all matched because just before we left I realized they hadn’t changed their shirts in 3 days so I made them shower and change. She didn’t know that my 2 year old is suffering from PTSD from her near drowning last summer and that to some extent so am I so we both wake up with nightmares. She doesn’t know how much I doubt my abilities as a mom these days since I wasn’t able to keep my child safe.

And it made me sad. Not because I wanted to lay all of that on her but because I didn’t want her trying to live up to  something that wasn’t realistic. What you see on the outside of a person doesn’t tell the whole picture.

It’s easy to fool ourselves sometimes. It’s easy to put on a show. But putting on a show hurts other moms.

I’ve thought back to that moment often and wondered if she went home discouraged because she was having a rough time. I can remember many times when I was a mom of two and I had hard days. Now as a mom of 6 I still have hard days. . . . not in public. Oh no. We save all our energy for to look civilized in public. . . mostly.

I smile and say things are great and the twins are easy and we just won’t talk about the mini-breakdown I had that morning where I had to hide in the bathroom by myself while my older kids fought and the babies all cried and I wondered how I would ever survive this.

The thing is, it’s scary admitting when you are falling short. It’s easier to sugar coat it. I have boys so The Lego Movie has been a big hit at our house. More often than not you’ll find one of them running around the house singing “Everything is awesome!”

I could sing that too. It may be in my sarcastic voice.

So here’s the truth:

Everything is awesome. But sometimes it’s really, REALLY hard too.

Somedays having 3 kids 2 and under is completely and totally overwhelming. Sometimes when I realize I’m responsible for the lives and futures of 6 people I get so scared I want to run away. Sometimes instead of doing the dishes I just buy paper plates. I think reversible pants are awesome because I can flip them inside out instead of doing laundry. I’ve learned how to type while holding 2 babies but I grind my teeth while doing it. My shortcomings often seem a whole lot bigger to me than my successes.

Painting a rose-colored picture for the people around us downplays their own struggles. Bad days don’t make us failures. They just make us real.

I’m making more of an effort to stop putting on a show. You never know when another mom is struggling. As moms, we have to be gentle with each other. Goodness knows we are hard enough on ourselves. Maybe instead of putting on a good show we can laugh together about our failures and look forward to an easier day tomorrow.

The next time you see me, or another mom, in public and I look fairly well put together just know that there was probably chaos at my house that morning trying to get us out the door and there will probably be chaos after we get home.

Let’s be real for a second and have a good laugh. What’s the funnies #momfail you’ve had lately?