Are you a good mother?

Reading all the posts is rather comforting, as it reassures me that most Mothers, mostly manage to do their best for their children but sometimes fall short of their own high standards.In other words, we muddle through.

I know I did my best but I sometimes wish I had the knowledge I have now, then.

I became a much better mother when my children had their own children and now get many surprised remarks about how well I handled situations similar to ones they are now facing

My mother was an excellent mother, under very hard circumstances. I had a lovely gran too. So much love.

I heard her talk on woman's hour on Monday, from what she was saying her mother was quite abusive to her about her weight.

I think I have been ok! You would have to ask my children. They both still speak to me! DS was a stroppy beggar for a while as a teenager but he turned out OK in the end.

I was lucky that DD was always a very easy going baby and child she could get melodramatic but had a sense of humour.

When DD was at the "I don't like you any more" stage when her will was crossed, I would just reply "Tough! I am still your mummy and you'll have to put up with me looking after you until you are big." It seems to have worked OK with no resentments.

My mum was very warm and loving but I wish she had been a bit better about doing our laundry more often and buying us some decent clothes so we didn't go out looking scruffy and smelly. I still resent that, it set me up for much bullying which added to my shyness.

My parents were not really hard up, my dad was a teacher before salaries improved relatively the later 60s. I think my mother had a thing about anything fashionable being dangerous and daring, pop music included. She managed to instill a sense of shame, prudery and lack of confidence in me and my sister.

In other ways she was very good. With small kids she knew how to chat with them and allowed us to make dens behind the settee with her clothes horse, mud pies and other child friendly messy play.

Hmm its a tricky one to post on. It's amazing how these feelings last long after the event.

I'm a fan of Jenni's but I do wish she stop blaming her poor late mother for everything!

I get a bit fed-up of her witterings sometimes, particularly when extolling her latest diet.

Some time back I saw a picture of her with her young sons, one of whom was quite overweight - is his mother to blame for that?

I'm sure she'd be hurt if in the future he writes articles on how his upbringing made him fat.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01pr6cw

Here's an interesting clip by Jenni Murray about her body image and the effect her mother had. I remember Jenni when she was a young TV presenter on local news and she was in my antenatal class, sitting on my floor with her partner. Interesting how someone so successful is still affected by the kind of mothering she had.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01pr6cw

I never thought that aiming to make my children happy was a good goal. My aim was for them to be trustworthy, kind and principled. I reckon happiness, or at least a feeling of self-worth, hat I reckon happiness partly depends on, a contentment that you are doing, or trying to do, your (imperfect) best is more important.

Some thoughtful points here thatbags. I remember once having a heated argument with some other mothers when mine were small who said the only thing they wanted for their children was for them to be happy. Now I didn't want my children to be unhappy, but I did want them to put as least as much back into society as they had or would receive from it and that it was important to instil that into them. Their own 'happiness' would often have to take a back seat.

DD1 and partner seem to be taking the same approach. It seems to me that anyone who does that is a good parent.

But the bottom line is that I was teaching them to respect themselves too. The rules are: respect yourself; respect others; respect your surroundings. With that in place you won't go far wrong.

Sounds a bit abrupt the way I've put it here, but the point I was making to them is that I knew and they knew I worked as a mother from good principles. They didn't have to like my methods but they should try to understand my reasons for doing what I do. Once they'd done that, they could start to form their own principles for action too.

Not putting this very well. It is a very deeply held idea and not easy, i find, to express.

Oh, and it was my dad who taught me that.

All of my daughters have, at some point in their lives, commented on my differentness from "other people". My response? "So...?" which is a polite way of saying "Get used to it matey; I am who I am." It doesn't matter if they don't like me, so long as they respect me. They seem to do both but i was determined that the respect came first, partly because that's how they would learn to respect others too, whether there was any liking in the case or not. It matters.

I suspect that I was quite lucky that Hugh Jolly was the Consultant Paediatrician in West London when absentdaughter was born. He was of the mind that if your instincts told you feed, play with, cuddle, sing to, sleep with, whatever, your baby, then follow them. That was a great help in the early days when I felt so uncertain about being a "proper mummy".

Abesntdaughter went through a phase when she decided I wasn't a "proper mummy". I think it was mainly to do with friends' mummies using Ragú Sauce to make spag bol, while I used fresh ingredients. One day I pointed out that I was her only mummy so I was, de facto, a "proper mummy". She clearly thought about this for a while – I''m not sure what she made of "de facto" as she was only about six – and then made me a "proper mummy box". As well as making the box, she put a tiny hand-made book inside with writing on each page – "You laugh like a proper mummy, you smell like a proper mummy, etc. I still have it somewhere.

I was on a completely different wavelength to my parents to the day they died. It caused a lot of problems in childhood, and although, as an adult I understood how their minds worked, I remained a mystery to them, but it wasn't their fault. It was just the way the family genes stacked up in me. I was very close to my maternal grandmother and her eldest daughter, who told me, as an adult, that they could see the mismatch.

In an earlier post I defined a good parent as a parent whose children feel absolutely confident that their parents love them. Some people misunderstood me to say that love is enough. It isn't, the most important part is that the child is absolutely convinced of that love and knows with absolute certainty that their parents will always be there for them, that I did have, and that was a major compensation for other problems.

As a child my DD was on a completely different wave band to me but I studied her and got the hang of how her mind worked even though it made no sense to me and worked with it. This is why in a previous post I spoke of my determination to be an appropriate mother not a perfect one. DD has chosen to be single and childless and we are now very close but DH and I still recognise when we need to step back when she goes off on one of her own incomprehensible metaphorical journeys.

We cannot choose what our children will be like and personally I think it does a child no harm to know that their parents are just like them and get cross, fed up and shout. I grew up in a household where that didn't happened and found it very difficult to deal with.

I have always felt, that unless you have had a truly traumatic childhood you should have dealt with any childhood issues by the time you are 25 and appreciate and understand that just as children cannot choose their parents, parents cannot choose their children and what you get given may be struggle to deal with.

I guess it did my best I really did but not according to my estranged daughter I prefer to believe the lovely cards she wrote saying how proud she was of me!
My son says I was a lovely mum so that will do for me.

I think. I worried far too much wish I had relaxed more and enjoyed stuff instead of stressing, but that's me. I know i cared for the both the very best I could wish I had. I shouted and got cross at times but we only human. Particularly remember battle of washing daughters long hair she hated it and no mater what it did funny things to stop shampoo going in eyes etc there were always tantrums I do remember getting cross when it shouldn't have.

Still good memories too.

phoenix never ever blame yourself for the tragedy of losing your son. I have come very close to being in your shoes, but I was lucky. At the time I wondered what I had done wrong; I now know the reasons were nothing to do with me. As mothers we always blame ourselves but there are so many other influences on our children that we may know nothing about. I don't think we can ever know what brings someone else to feel that life is no longer worth living.

Like Kiora I'm sorry if I am speaking out of turn, but I can't bear to think that you would add feelings of guilt to your grief. Please be kind to yourself, you deserve kindness

Phoenix and Kiora If I hadn't had a home birth with my son I would also have thought I brought the wrong baby home. I have always failed to get close to him and it has been very difficult but they have the same upbringing and I have tried to do my best so I live with it now.

That doesn't sound awful Phoenix I have more in common with my eldest son. My daughter is lovely but I think she's from a different planet. My youngest well I sometimes think we were given the wrong child. But I love them as you do yours. Your comment about still having two sons made me want to cry. I don't know the whole story only the basic facts but you always come across as sensible( among other things) So forgive me for saying but I doubt very much that your statement is true. It's a mothers lot to blame ourselves. It very rarely is our fault but it's what we do. I hope I haven't been insensitive for butting in. I always enjoy your post so much there my favourite.

Probably not a good mother, if I was then perhaps I would still have 2 sons.

My eldest (aged 35) is perhaps quite difficult to be a mother to, that probably sounds very odd, but I really don't quite know how to explain it. He is very "closed" not one to give a hug or be physically demonstrative, so different from his brother.

I always had more in common with DS2, sense of humour, attitude towards others etc, DS1 is so very different.

This probably sounds awful.

No, not necessarily - I think I'm a better Granny - they are all grown up and I love young people!

I do not think I ever set out to be a perfect mother. I knew enough about myself to know that was beyond me. I quite consciously refused to read any of the books on child rearing and child care that were current when I had my children. I think Dr Spock was the child care guru of the time.

I came to motherhood very late, for the early 1970s. I was 28 and was classified as an 'elderly' primagravida!! However, I do think this meant that I was more self-confident than many much younger mothers.

What I set out to be was an appropriate mother to each of my children, responsive to their individual needs, physically and intellectually, which were very different, rather than conforming to any arbitrary definition of perfect parenting.

Like most parents I am proud of how our children have turned out and we are all close, but what I have found is that the things that DC think was special about their upbringing are not usually the ones I had in mind. Aged 14, DS came home from school one day and said in a heartfelt voice 'I am SO glad I have eccentric parents' before disappearing up to his bedroom. I actually thought we were very normal run-of-the-mill parents. He never explained this comment. More recently, in reply to some comment I made about DGC, he turned and said approvingly 'but I had an unmaterialistic upbringing'. Since DH and I had professional careers and we were reasonably affluent when they were young this really took me by surprise.

I set out to be not just adequate but the best possible mother. I read all the books, I thought hard about doing the most important job in the world. I was so proud of my 4 little girls and when accused of irresponsibilty I would say that my children were going to be an asset to the world, and they are.
Youngest daughter has just spent most of her year's maternity leave sitting cuddling her baby and I regret bitterly that I was so busy trying to be perfect that I never did that.

I wish I could say "I wouldn't change a thing" but there's a lot I would if I could. But that's in retrospect. On the whole I enjoyed them. They tell now they have wonderful memories. They still see us regularly and are more than happy to leave us in charge of their children for days or weeks . One of my children's friends told me they hoped their own children would be as close as mine. So perhaps I didn't do too bad. I adore them. I'v let them go and hid the pain of doing it. That was the really really hard bit.