I am the worst mother ever!!!

Have you ever had one of those weeks that make you feel like all your efforts were in vain? As a mother or father sometimes you feel like you are being pulled in a million different directions.  I noticed I spend more time concentrating on keeping my kids schedules straight and helping them stay on track than I do anything else.  Sometimes it gets so overwhelming that I forget something, and at times it's is important to one of my kids.

Yesterday as I picked the kids up from school my second child got in the car and began to cry, "mom you can't touch me, I touched one of those nuts you are allergic too!".  (I am deathly allergic to walnuts and pecans and my daughter is allergic to peanuts, hence the stress)  I calmed him down and asked if he had washed his hands and he said yes and then I reassured him it would be okay.  I asked if someone brought the nuts to eat, and he said Monday was when they needed to bring their 100 things to share for the 100 days of school.  I almost died in my seat, I had not read a note about this, then the memory came to my mind....Friday we had a lot of commotion when the kids came home and he had tried 3 times to give me his letter and I was so busy trying to meet other obligations I told him to put it away until I had time to look at it.  A comment that never comes out of my mouth, in fact I remember it hurting his feelings, and yes I did apologize.  Nonetheless, I forgot about the note, so my son went to school probably being the only kid in class not to bring something and then yesterday they made a poster with the items.

I felt like the worst mother, I expressed my feelings that I had wished he would have come home Monday and reminded me because they would have had them before yesterday.  He cried until we got home and washed his hands twice.  I sat in the kitchen washing dishes being mad and thinking of how if I didn't need to remember everything for everyone I would have had less stress and possibly remembered, and on top of it I wondered if it made him look dumb.  As these horrible thoughts were racing through my brain my son with his tear stained cheeks walked up to me and asked if he could hug me now that he had washed his hands three times.

I knew then I was the worst mother...my son didn't care that he may have been the only class member not to bring an item or that he had a mom who couldn't remember to read a note and follow through with it, all he was worried about was me and the fact that if the nut from his hand touched me I could possibly die.  He didn't care if it affected him in any way.  How could I worry so much about embarrassment when I raised my son to care more about the welfare of another?

We live in a world where we are trained to worry so much about what others think that we forget to focus on the simple things that could really make a difference in life.  My son was my example, he was everything I would hoped he would be at such a young age.  I am the worst mother for forgetting what needed to be done and for worrying about what the teacher or the others kids thought, but I turned out to be the best mother when I saw that my influence is making a difference in my child's  behavior.  I am going to live today with only those I love in my mind, their welfare, and how much they mean to me and then today I can find Joy in me.