A lot of really cool stuff happens when you become a mother. You’re asked for snacks approximately 3,678 times a day, and it’ll probably be a good 12 or 13 years before you’re able to use the restroom without an audience. When you sneeze, you might pee a little. You will hear all variations and forms of “MoOoooooOOOOmy!!!!!!” a trillion times a day. Having a clean home is almost futile since your home will most likely be a disaster zone within 0.24 seconds after you’ve cleaned it. You may very well reach your boiling point before 8 o’clock in the morning. No matter what you make for dinner, your children will be the toughest critics. You may find yourself still watching Daniel Tiger 45 minutes after your kid has been playing in a completely different room.
Alright, alright, maybe that stuff isn’t all that cool, but there is one thing that truly is cool. When you become a mother, the decisions that you make for your children are solely and completely YOUR decisions. They are the decisions that you, you and your spouse, or you and your family come together on, and you make them with your children’s best interest at heart.
To make that fact even cooler (yes, it’s possible), you don’t owe a single person an explanation when it comes to the decisions you make for your children. That holds especially true for your decision regarding school this year.
Look, I totally get it. These are beyond insane times we are living in. Chances are, we never thought there would be a time when we would have to actually make decisions about what form of school our children would be taught in. Yet, here we are.
For many of us moms, we spend hours upon hours of each day, mulling over our options. Just when we feel like we’ve settled on a choice, we spend the next four days questioning that choice and wondering if it’s the right choice.
Do I send my child back to in-person school, possibly risking their health? Or do I keep my child home for virtual school or homeschool with a separate curriculum, possibly risking my mental health? Nothing feels right, right?
However, whatever decision you do come to is your own decision. It doesn’t matter what your neighbor, your sister, your best friend, or your fellow mom friends are doing. It doesn’t matter if they agree with your decision or not. It doesn’t matter if they pass judgment on you for the decision you made — even though this is one of the last things they should judge you for. Because at the end of the day, you do not owe one single person an explanation or justification for the decisions you make — especially the ones regarding YOUR children.
Your children are your own and no one else’s. You know what is best for them, their well-being, and their education. You know what makes them tick, you know what environment they learn best in, and you know what will bring them happiness when everything is said and done. You and no one else.
As I said, there are a lot of cool things that happen to us when we become mothers. But in my opinion, the coolest thing is that our children will love us, unconditionally, no matter what decisions we may have to make for them.
Even when it comes to school.
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