The September Perspective

It's September, Labor Day is over and everyone is back to the old rush.  School buses are back on the roads, along with the traffic, and moms everywhere are plastering Facebook with first-day-of-school photos of their kids.  One of my mom friends posted on Monday, "I love my kids with all my heart, but I am soooooo glad they are going back to school tomorrow!"

Yes, back to school comes as a relief to many parents after 3 long months of summer chaos, but as Laura Rowley writes in her Huff Post article, Why September can be the Toughest Month for Working Mothers , September -  a month fraught with its own assortment of parental stressors - is enough to send even the most organized mom off the deep end.

As is always the case when I read articles written by moms about the overwhelming stresses and insecurities of motherhood, I got to the end, shook my head and said aloud, "THANK GOD I had the good sense to avoid this prison sentence!"

For my mom friends, September is a time to get back into the feverish daily pace of Beat the Clock - "How will I get Johnny to soccer at 5:00 when Melissa has to be at softball at the same time?", "Oh no - it's already 9:00 p.m. and I forgot to get to the store to pick up the Lunchables!",  "How in the world am I going to get all of us ready and out the door on time?"  "How many times have I told him to get off the computer and get his homework done!!?"  It's a time for being stretched too thin, worked too hard, living the life of a mouse on a treadmill - spinning wheels and getting nowhere fast for 9 long months.  Following that is summer "vacation", which means 3 months of fun and relaxation for the kids, and nonstop madness for mom.

As a childfree woman, September is a completely different experience.  It's that pretty time of year when the sun sits a little lower in the sky and starts to cast a warm glow over everything.  It's that wonderful month when we can turn the air conditioning off, open the windows and say, "ah....".  It's the best time at the Jersey Shore - the hordes of tourists are gone, but the ocean is at its warmest, the nights are cool and beautiful and the restaurants are still open for business.   It's a time when I still get that little flutter of nervous butterflies and the intense urge to buy myself some notebooks and pens, even though my school days are long gone.  It's my time for setting new personal goals and aspirations, thinking about what new adventures to plan, and feeling excited about the impending fall and winter holidays.

I'll take my September over Laura Rowley's any day!

Stress Management for Mommies

Is your blood pressure rising?  Are you feeling dizzy?  Is your heart palpatating?  Are you irritable and yelling?  Is your family walking on eggshells around you because you are a ticking time bomb?

If your answer is yes, you must be a MOM, so do yourself a favor and take a "Mommy Time Out".  Practice deep breathing!  Get yourself a "family stress box" (???)  Get one of those squeezie stress balls to squeeze!  Stick your IPod on and listen to some relaxing music.  Journal your feelings!   Get better about predicting those "nightmare moments" (i.e. mornings with your kids) and do a better job preparing for them!  Work off the stress by exercising (but you'll have to do it WITH your kids, since you have no time to yourself).

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I love the Today Show's "mommy spots" because they are frequently focused on how to make the drudgery of motherhood more bearable. 

Psst - Today Show:  how about this idea for a spot on motherhood:

OPT OUT

More Bitching and (a little) Backpedaling

Wow - the parents are really coming out of the woodwork to bitch and complain about the downsides of parenting. Love it. Here's another mom-authorized bitchfest entitled 10 things no one told you about work-life balance with kids. As is the usual custom with parental bitchfests, while she spends the bulk of her article dishing the shit, she is careful to end her bitchfest with the requisite pro-parenting propaganda (The Backpedal) - lest you be left with the idea that she is promoting the message that having kids is not worth it (which would make her a terrible, terrible person, a bad mom, and a traitor to all the other long-suffering moms who need constant reminders that having kids wasn't the biggest mistake of their lives).

I must say I find the title of her article curious. No one told her about work-life balance with kids? Do we really need someone to tell us about this? How is it possible to live in our society and observe other people (with kids) and not notice that being a parent royally screws up a person's life and turns it into a major stress-fest? I don't need anyone to write a list out for me to give me the heads up. All I have to do is look around me at the people I know who have kids and I can see that having kids = sleep deprivation, exhaustion, stress, constant upset, negative impact on career and job performance, financial strain, weight gain, and the list goes on and on. How is it that this author was surprised to encounter all these negative changes in her life once she had kids? What planet does she live on?

Oh, that's right. She probably bought into all the pro-parenting propaganda that was spoonfed to her during her entire pre-kid life like, "it's so worth it", "it's the most important and most rewarding job in the world", "it's the best thing you can do", "you can do it all", "you just make it work" (you know - the same propaganda we childfree people were smart enough to recognize as a BS brainwashing scam), while turning a blind eye to the conflicting evidence before her very eyes. It's interesting how the human mind works, isn't it - how people believe what they want to believe and then are shocked when reality smacks them in the face.

P.S. After you read the article, be sure to scroll down and read the comments by more stressed out parents. Lots of bitching, and minimal backpedaling.

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If you'd like to read more from regretful parents, click here.