Health & Fitness
Mompetition: Let's Stop Competing and Celebrate
mom-pet-ition: The tendency of moms to be competitive, leading to intimidation and/or jealousy. One writer says, in honor of Mother's Day, lets let it go for good.
When I worked full time in corporate America I was fiercely competitive with my co-workers. Part of my job was to teach others how to analyze competitive intelligence and strategize against it. Then I became a mom and really learned about competition, or as my husband calls it Mompetition.
It really hit home when recently, I received this email from another mother of multiples who shared her feelings about seeing my family at an event a few years ago.
Of course had heard about you. The working mom with quadruplets.
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So I saw you there. You and your hubby were calm and collected, strolling peacefully with your daughters. All of them were wearing beautiful white bonnets starched and clean and everyone looked relaxed and were enjoying themselves.
I am an assertive person and I went to introduce myself to you….however, you were so perfect and you did everything so well…I swear…I was too intimidated! I felt insecure about my appearance and how I was handling twins and there were you with four!
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Ha ha ha…I laugh about it now but I promise it took three years for me to tell you!
My hat is still off to you – don’t’ know how you do it…
My first response was to laugh out loud. When I read it to my husband, he said, boy you sure have her fooled. Truly, I am frazzled and frenetic on a daily basis and I have no idea how someone else had such a different view of me.
I saw this same mom at a party on Sunday and I told her how skewed her view of me was. We laughed and swapped stories about being a mom of many. I felt bad that someone did not think they measured up.
An hour later, I was on the other side of the equation. I took the girls to the second party of the day, a birthday party for a 3-year-old friend of theirs. It was at Thrasher Park and had a cute super hero theme. It took me all of one minute to notice how much detail the birthday girl's mom had put into making the party special.
Hand-sewn table cloths, all of her favorite foods, a mural for pictures complete with a real Mr. Incredible, a handmade pin-the-mask-on-the-superhero game, and so much more. The party favors were hand sewn super hero capes with each child’s initial and decorations for them to attach for a craft project. The made-from-scratch cupcakes in three flavors, with three different colored sparkle frosting, was the icing on the cake, literally. I was not as eloquent as the person who admired me: My exact quote to my friend was, “You suck!”
Why do we do this to each other as mothers and more importantly, why do we do it to ourselves? We are all good mothers in our own way. Measuring ourselves against other mothers is not a good idea. It will probably only serve to make you feel bad about yourself for no reason at all.
I propose we forget the competitive spirit that seems to find us all at one time or another and just celebrate the wonderful jobs we do of being mom.