I often get asked how I manage, having six children and home educating some of them.

It’s never an easy question to answer. I just love children so much. I love my children and spending time with them is no hardship.

I’m not going to pretend life is easy every day. It isn’t. Often I feel frustrated with the lack of time I have to fit in my homely responsibilities on top of caring for my kids. I want to spend time with them but womanhood pulls at me from different angles. I find myself determined to complete or accomplish a task. Whether it be chores, errands or even something that is just about me and I know that because I’ve got myself set on it, ultimately I am not always making the most of every minute.

“Mummy is busy right now.” Sound familiar?

I used to worry if I was doing enough for them and one day I read a wonderful piece of advice by Sandra Dodd that I began practising, which was to try to spend the bulk of my time with, doing for or thinking about my children. As they get older I spend less with them but then the time I spend thinking about them increases! I also give to the one who needs me the most right now. I am careful to be the mother they each need. And that is different for each of them believe it or not.

How do I manage? Well, I don’t manage them at all really, I suppose. I manage myself because being all the things for all the people can take a lot out of you! Sometimes I do it very badly. I get worn to a ravelling or distracted. At all other times, I strive to be Listening Mum, Present Mum, Visible Mum, Comforting Mum, Understanding Mum and on it goes.

There are times when I am winning. I cook nourishing dinners or hot breakfasts, schedule a special time for each, remember the drinks on a day trip out, play ALL the games and watch their made-up shows over and over.

And sometimes I don’t.

When people ask how I manage what they’re really asking is “How do you cope?” and coping is something else entirely…

There are times I know, I failed and my headstrong and pubescent kids, hold those moments against me. They need to be right, to hear their own voices and opinions, to challenge my imperfections as they make sense of the world and their place in it. They are weighing up who they want to be and often it is in sharp contrast to me, my values or what I think is best.

This is what I raised them to do. To question and to be the change. To strive for better for this world and the people in it. I have raised them to manage and cope well without me. And that is the hardest because they break your heart a fair bit while doing it. There are days I feel downright bullied in my own home. Days I want to scream at them to stop screaming at me. Days I want to tell everyone to stop being so utterly unkind and ungrateful. And yes. There are days when I do exactly that.

Occasionally I cry. Sometimes I feel so deflated I have to lie down. My body aches from the mental exhaustion of managing coping with everyone elses outbursts. Those days I close my bedroom curtains early, thats for sure!

One of the things that upsets me the most is when someone suggests I think myself perfect for simply suggesting a better way to communicate or retorts like “Well you chose to have kids” from the kids themselves. Those are dark struggles for me. Finding the strength not to retaliate is a work in progress. Coping is hard.

I hope one day they see what I hoped to provide, without me pointing it out. I hope that it clicks and they seek me out to visit and to talk to once more. That I remain their safe person and the first they think of calling should ever they need. I should like that very much.

You see even though there are less than pleasant days, the joyous ones far outweigh the sad and every day lived is a day in my life. I am happy to have a life that has made a mother of me. I can still say that spending time with my children is no hardship and that I wouldn’t swap them because whilst it’s not easy it is wonderful.

I decided some time ago that it would be far better to give up things for them that would increase the chances of me being around. So that I might live long into their adulthood and be welcome enough to share some of my old age with them all. I still have my own life to live of course, my own dreams. I am not “just a mum” and I know that they could go anywhere in the world and be nowhere near me, but I love them enough to live for them as well as to die for them.

Coping is doing the next right thing with what you currently have. Managing is planning to reduce or avoid problems in the first place. Both are a science and an art!

© 2023 Juliette Proffitt