“Less” of a Mother

There’s this wonderful pre-K program that First 5 is providing, and Hunter was invited to use it! Along with Hunter attending a preschool-like setting, there are two parenting classes. I went to the first one and it was very lame, targeting overly burdened or traumatized mothers whom failed to develop an attachment to their children. And from what I noticed none of the mothers whom attended qualified. I would have to say that they were at the opposite of the spectrum, towards super mom qualities. They were all low income and a majority of them were monolingual Spanish speakers, but in terms of parenting skills they needed no help, especially from a riff-raff social worker set on pushing her values. Ugh! If I ever become like her, consider me resigned!

I don’t think I will be attending the second class, but I don’t regret attending the first. It was wonderful meeting such dedicated mothers! What other mother would take the time to attend a lame class as that when they already have the skills anyways?

But I also noticed another thing. I was the thinnest mother in the room! You would think I would be oozing with pride because of this, but in actuality I felt tremendously self-conscious and ashamed. Because the typical and most shared reason that a mother is fat is because she has prioritizing her family over herself. I suddenly felt less of a mother, and guilty of the time that I didn’t devote to them.