If you could earn a bachelor’s in motherhood, would you go for it? What about a master’s degree? If each of us could be honest with ourselves, we really need to shoot for a degree well beyond the Ph.D. of Motherhood, because a woman’s learning capacity 
should never stop once she’s in the mother role. In all my years of maternal education, observation, and experience, I don’t recall knowing of anyone who has attained that level of mommy perfection: a level where there’s nothing else to learn and no further room for growth.
Simply stated, mothers know when they’re up to par or not. We know ourselves, and most of us have probably established that we were flawed from the very beginning. When you are in the infancy of motherhood, you may have received a little parenting education from books, babysitting, and observation. I like to call this the pre-baby workshop phase. However, the real coursework doesn’t begin until your firstborn fills up his or her lungs with the same air you’re breathing. But even the best preparation can’t prepare you for all the possible scenarios that can arise in the lives of you and your child. It’s not like we’re born with the all-knowing motherly intuition gene, whose effects are unleashed at all the right times and manifested in all the right ways. And don’t forget…babies don’t stay babies. So, did your pre-baby preparation and this non-existent gene equip you for your child’s adolescent years? My answer is an emphatic NO! All the mothers I know are still works-in-progress and are refining their skills sets on a continuous basis. They are learning as they go.
Nevertheless, there’s nothing wrong with pursuing mommy perfection. It gives us something to aspire to and forces us to admit that we don’t have everything figured out. Let’s look at it from the viewpoint of the individuals who are in the direct line of our motherly fire. If we’re doing our parental jobs right, our children already know we’re not perfect but will love us anyway. Do you know why they can be so accepting of us? Because they grow to learn that they’re not perfect either. Remember: children, more often than not, are a product of the parental influences surrounding them. In other words, we make up some of the reflection that they see in the mirror. You just witnessed one of my “ah-ha” moments.
Jana’s Quotable
You will never see:
Perfect mothers raising perfect children.
Perfect mothers raising imperfect children.
Imperfect mothers raising perfect children.
You will see:
Imperfect mothers raising imperfect children.
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