I am not an ENGLISH major, so please forgive my bad grammar...and typo's


I'm a mother of three girls. I have a problem.

Trial and error is the direction I am going in at the moment. I have picked up many books (most of them half read) to try to give me some kind of insight into the complexities of raising three girls who are so totally different. I know that what works with one will not necessarily work with all three. I know that a soft voice with one can have the same damage as a loud one with the other. I know that a vicious look can send one into tears and the other slamming into their room. What I don't know is what effect any of this will have on them when they are grown.

Sometimes I wonder if I am grown-up enough for the role I have to fulfill as a mother. I still feel in some ways that I am an insecure child in an adult world. Self-confidence is a hard thing to teach when it is something you are lacking. I witness through my own eyes the effects my nagging has on my girls when I feel that they are not doing something I think is right. Whether its how they are wearing their hair, to the clothes they are wearing on their backs. So my question is how do you correct behavior that you do not agree with without smothering the child's individuality?

Is there a certain point where you just say, "Do what you want! Wear what you want!" and exactly when is this? Is it when they are putting black eyeliner an inch think around their eyes? Is it when they use a can of hair spray to slick back their bangs? Is it when they wear a tank top for summer with their black winter pants and sandals in December? If I tell them to change is that smothering their personal growth? Is the battle that ensues after I open my mouth with a negative reaction better then just letting them leave the house dressed how they want?

It seems that I am raising my daughters in a world that I don't really understand. I know that the media, schools, churches and experts all try to enlighten me with knowledge that I should find helpful. You can walk into any bookstore and find shelves filled with the opinions of others. But while I've been trying to read all those books, Ive discovered that I now have three teenagers living in my house. And I thought I was a fast reader.

While I don't feel that I have delinquents on my hands, I want to make sure that I never do. While I try to give my girls the space they need to learn from their mistakes and to carve a spot in this world, am I leaving myself out of that process too much or am I inserting my opinion where it is not needed or wanted? Or will my opinion really make a difference in the long run?

Well here we go. I'm not an expert, I'm not college educated, but I am a mother. I like whoever came up with the phrase "Domestic Goddess" yet I don't think that quite fits me either. I am a girl in a moms body. I am twelve and insecure, I am seven and scared of the dark, I am ten and have my first crush. I have friends but I am sometimes lonely. I have a husband who is the same to me as the boy I met twenty years ago. I have a father I think will live forever and a mother I wish I could be like. I don't have all the answers, but sometimes feel like I should.

Hopefully these following pages will be filled with what I call "Slices of Life" They are in no way a blueprint of what you should or shouldn't do, but more of a photo capturing my thoughts. I don't think I will ever know if I have did the "right thing" at any given time. I think as a mom I will always second guess every decision that I make. I will wonder "what if?" I know that kind of thinking is unproductive but it is inevitable. You may be able to get pass it, you may be able to forget you asked yourself, but it will happen, even if its just a whisper in your mind as you fall off to sleep.