What Mothers Do: especially when it looks like nothing

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There is something beyond words to express to the person who helped you to walk and talk, who gave you your first puppy, who helped you with school, and who gave you all the love she possibly could. But no, it’s all been done by a mother–the same one who turns off the light at bedtime and who welcomes you first thing the next morning with breakfast on the table. This can leave her feeling belittled or embarrassed instead of feeling proud that she has taken such care over something that she notices affects her baby. According to Poulter, ‘The children of a perfectionist mother tend to be hypercritical of themselves, feeling inadequate and emotionally empty. They’ll always be there to nurse our wounds and carry us until we’re strong enough to be on our own again.

What Mothers Do, especially when it looks like nothing

For the times when the teenager is out or the middle schooler needs to be picked up or when there is the crazy sleepover at her house and she’s uttered lights out a dozen times but still hears the giggles. Empathic mothers are attuned to the emotional welfare of their children; narcissistic mothers represent a perversion of the maternal instinct. She teaches them, as the best of educators, so that her children learn to walk a path that will be complicated, full of obstacles; along which they’ll have to live numerous setbacks. Have you ever spent all day looking after your baby or young child – and ended up feeling that you have ‘done nothing all day’? But then she mentions her concerns to someone else and all too often they reply that she must ‘stop worrying so much’ as if she has been stupid to waste her time thinking about the concern.All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. Maybe not the improvement of her intellect, but the cultivation of her soul, her manners, her character, her reaction to the stimuli the world gives her.

What Mothers Do: Especially When It Looks Like Nothing What Mothers Do: Especially When It Looks Like Nothing

She redirects the focus to her needs and guilt-trips her children at every sign of perceived disobedience. It gives so much validation that when we "sit around" with our babies and young children we are actually doing very exhausting work. If you are a mother, and have ever felt: that nobody understands what you do all day; overwhelmed by your feelings for your baby; tired all the time; that nothing prepared you for motherhood; uncertain what your baby seems to want; short-tempered with your partner – you will find this the most reassuring book you have ever picked up.

Depending on her social class, the narcissistic mother may enlist the help of others to care for her children while neglecting to give her children affection or attention when they are around, treating them as nuisances rather than as human beings.