good enough

When your husband isn't "good enough".

We've all wished it as moms: those moments when our husbands fail to read our minds about how we like to parent our children. We talk down to them if they do something {in a way} that we scratch our heads being witness to.

We desire them to help out around the home, and then quickly critique the way they folded those towels or loaded the dishwasher. We also cringe at the way they looked "all thumbs" while changing the baby or almost vomited at the sight and smell of a dirty diaper.

This attitude almost always leads to a "I should've just done it myself" kinda mentality. After all, the diaper change took twice as long and left us with a screaming infant we had to console, which caused the dinner to burn [because we couldn't hear the timer go off] and the house was sent into a black hole of chaos.

Sometimes, moms will post pics of their children with mismatched outfits and lopsided ponytails with the caption "Daddy dressed me today" or something like it.

It occurred to me, that while our "mom-tuition radar" is constantly on high alert, and most things that revolve around mothering and homemaking almost come second nature to us, they don't and probably won't for the men in our lives.

Those moments when you've just had it with motherhood and you find your insides about to burst with anxiety as you scream for help....[God has given you a perfect helpmate, a co-parent]....and then you bark and bite at him when he fails to parent exactly like you. You may be married, but what married couple actually shares a brain?! You make him feel less than at household tasks and further, you confuse him as you say you crave help, but yet keep him from helping.

I don't know about you, but I'm glad that my husband doesn't act like another mother to our children. Quite frankly, children don't need two mothers and they certainly don't need their father to be a carbon copy of their mother.

So let's celebrate when our husbands want to pitch in.

Let's laugh and giggle with him as he wrestles them all on the floor each night instead of "hushing" them back to reality. Let's allow him, without embarrassment, without public social media humiliation, to dress our children the way he sees fit. Let's accept the lopsided ponytails he tried twice as hard to accomplish on our little girls.

Let's do whatever we can to celebrate how his fatherly dynamic is necessary and beneficial to our home. We shouldn't desire him to be like us. We should encourage him to be the best father he can be by fostering his fatherly instincts.

A good father is a rare gem these days. If your children have a good father to run to after he gets home from work everyday, reads stories with a million voices, and does what he can to put you first, then you have a true treasure. Allow him to be that.


My husband (aka, worlds best daddy) with 4 of his 5 arrows...hoping to put number 5 in his arms soon!:)