By Erin Kurt | Lifehack
What do you think matters most to your children? You driving them to lessons and practices, or is it the smile and hug you greet them with after school? If you guessed the latter, you are correct.
Sixteen years of teaching and giving the same assignment every Mother’s Day has led me to the exact same conclusion. You see, every Mother’s Day I would ask my students to give me advice on being a mother. They were to think about things their mother or guardian did for or with them that made them feel happy or loved. The classroom would go silent as the students wrote intensely for longer than they had ever written before. Often smiles would appear on their faces as they reflected on the happy experiences they were remembering. After reading their responses I would add to my list all the ideas they mentioned. Surprisingly, many of the responses were the same. Year after year, in every country I taught, and in every type of demographic, the students were saying the same things and had the same message: It’s the small things that their mothers did that meant the most and that they remembered.
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Many moms today feel as if they are not good mothers unless they are racing around, shuttling their children from lessons to practices and back to lessons again. I’ve had mothers tell me that they want to give their children every opportunity they did not have. While this thinking might bring the mother some comfort, it really does not do the same for their child who is potentially feeling overextended, stressed and tired.
After speaking endlessly about this topic with my students, it became clear to me that children today are involved in too many activities and are in turn becoming less in touch with themselves and their families. In addition, my students told me they really wished for more time to “just play”. Of course, many of them enjoy their extracurricular activities, but it is not necessary they said to be allowed to do everything. What they enjoyed most, and what made their hearts happiest was when their mothers did simple things for or with them.
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Here is a list of the top ten things students around the world said they remembered and loved most about their mothers.
1) Come into my bedroom at night, tuck me in and sing me a song. Also, tell me stories about when you were little.
2) Give me hugs and kisses and sit and talk with me privately.
3) Spend quality time just with me, not with my brothers and sisters around.
4) Give me nutritious food so I can grow up healthy.
5) At dinner talk about what we could do together on the weekend.
