We do our best to be the best moms we can be.
We roll ourselves out of bed at unbelievably early hours, feeding and clothing our little ones before the caffeine has even hit our bloodstream. We scroll Pinterest for dinner recipes and cute DIY crafts, that we may or may not even do. We spend our days feeding, cleaning, chauffeuring, planning, organizing, and so much more.
I would accomplish so much yet when asked that one cringe-worthy question I’d seem to buckle at the knees and forget all that I’ve done. It’s as if my entire self-worth is boiled down into that one question and how I respond-
‘So, what did you do all day?’
Instead of looking back on our day with pride and glory, we look around and the dishes not done, the pile of laundry not folded, or the toys strewn across the floor. Our perspective is immediately drawn away from all the amazing things we did to all the little tasks we didn’t do.
It’s a tale as old as time. We become mothers and we suddenly expect ourselves to be able to manage it all, the household chores, the kids, the volunteering, the car-pooling, the playdates, the side hustles, everything. We expect ourselves to become productivity machines.
And we have set these expectations all while relying on a skewed, society driven definition of what it means to be productive instead of creating our own.
It’s the hustle mentality, the work hard mentality that we learned in school, in corporate America, and in the media that we have allowed to seep into how we define and value ourselves as mothers.
We have tied our self-worth to someone else’s definition of what it means to be productive.
But it’s time we start rewriting history. It’s time that we take back and redefine what it means to be productive. Or maybe it’s time that we give up the idea and the expectations all together and start cherishing the unproductive days.
That’s what I did.
I cherished the days where I rewashed the same load of laundry for the third time because we were too busy playing hide and seek to put it in the dryer.
I cherished the days where I cuddled and read stories or we watched movies all day forgetting about the sink full of dishes.
I cherished the days where all I do is wipe away tears, give hugs, and do my best to manage those big emotions boiling out of these little people.
Next time we’re asked, “what did you do all day?” Don’t be shy. These are the days that we should be most proud of.
These are the days that we’re connecting and caring. These are the days we’re going to miss the most.
And these are the days that our kids will remember, not the days when the dishes were clean or the piles of laundry were folded.
But the days where we played, we cuddled, and we loved with all our might.
They remember the days we were not only there, but truly present.
So let’s take back our days, let’s redefine productivity in motherhood. Because sometimes the most productive thing you can do for your child is to be completely unproductive.