Confessions of a Former Sanctimommy

Yes, I admit it. I used to be a *gasp* sanctimommy. What’s even worse, I was a sanctimommy without children.

Seriously. I was (am?) an elementary school teacher for eight years and I was the queen of “my-child-will-neverland”. MY child will never act like that in public, I just won’t have it, MY child will never go to school dressed like that, etc. You can pretty much fill in the rest, maybe you’ve even said it yourself. I can remember cataloging what the parents were doing wrong with each of my most challenging students. Hopefully, my thoughts were not evident to these parents. If they were, I greatly admire them for not decking me during parent teacher conferences. Maybe it was a form of protection – as long as I could place blame with the parents, I could ensure that I would never face the same problem with my child. I let this belief drive me to be the perfect mom. Because, if I was the perfect mom (unlike the parents of the children in my class), then I would have the perfect child. Okay – I never actually thought I would be perfect, but I set my standards impossibly high.

Then I had little J. And I learned. Children have a mind of their own and you can’t make them do anything. It started with his refusal to nap (it is a myth that all newborns sleep most of the day) and has just gone downhill from there. Not that I think I am a horrible mommy: I feed him, he usually has the right shoes on the right feet, and I have never hit him. But I am far from the mommy I had pictured in my head. The no TV mommy. The only eat organic good for you food mommy. The don’t have a meltdown in the middle of Target mommy. I am now the watch Playhouse Disney so I can take a shower mommy. The it’s okay to have hotdogs for lunch again as long as you are eating something mommy. The I will bribe you with the Dollar Spot to get you to stop screaming mommy. And most days I think I’m doing okay.

I don’t know if I will ever go back to teaching full time again, but if I do, I know that I will be more patient, more understanding and better able to support the parents of my students. Having a child will make me a better teacher, even before that child is school-aged. I guess it was one big lesson the teacher could only learn through hands-on experience, but it is a most valuable lesson at that.