Adoptive Mom Wrapped 2024
It’s that time of year when Spotify, GoodReads, DuoLingo and various other platforms offer a “year in review” to remind you what you’ve listened to, studied, or read during the year. It’s often a fun way to look back at the year and see what you accomplished or what your favorites were. I discovered I had obsessively listened to the Hamilton soundtrack. I hadn’t realized how many times I’d vibed to “The Room Where It Happened” and “Guns and Ships” until I saw the numbers. My wrapped list made me laugh.
DuoLingo showed me I’d learned 204 new words in Spanish and 200 in Russian. GoodReads let me know I’d read 102 books. Well. Listened to/read. I use the heck out of my audible subscription. It made me wonder what a year wrapped would look like as a mom. For example:
Personal growth:
- Congratulations, you’ve refrained from swearing 20380 times when your child was triggering your personal trauma.
- You learned 20 new words to describe Minecraft
- You learned you still hate Minecraft despite your child feeling the need to describe it to you in excruciating detail but you love your kid more so you keep listening. Good job you.
Physical Fitness:
- You’ve taken eight million, three hundred, and seventy-four steps from your bedroom around the house picking up socks/underwear/toys!
- You’ve pushed a swing 200 times even though your kid is very much old enough to push their own.
Learning:
- You’ve learned 4 new ways to solve a math problem while listening to a child who asked you for help tell you, “You’re doing it wrong!” and not losing your cool. Way to show self-control!
- You gently corrected your 10-year-old when she tried to say a word in French that was almost certainly not a word.
Mental Health:
- You visited your counselor and talked about your issues 20 times this year. You should probably arrange for more visits next year. Really.
Relationships:
- You did not react to your husband in his sleep after he snored so loud it woke you up. Way to keep the love alive!
- You successfully convinced your kids you don’t have a favorite. Unfortunately, they now all agree that you hate them equally. Baby steps.
- Your spouse is still in love with you and you didn’t yell at him when he sat next to you in bed listening to reels at top volume while you tried to read or write. Again, great self-control.
- You have friends who love you and live nearby. Records show you visited them twice this year. You should stop cosplaying as a hermit and visit your friends more.
Hours spent cooking: Incalculable.
Do your people ever stop eating? It’s staggering the amount of time you spend cooking food that may only get eaten if the moon and stars are in alignment. At least they’ll always eat chicken nuggets. They’re eating. Good job.
I can’t imagine what my kids would say if they wrote me a year in review. I suspect I’d get high marks for certain things and rather low marks for other. That might even depend on the time of day.
For instance my oldest pre-teen might say I’m emotionally available and a good listener earlier in the day but a terrible person who doesn’t care about her ten minutes later. Ah, the joys of parenting.
If I were to give my kids a wrapped report it would probably go like this:
- Made it to school on time 60 out of 180 days. Numbers are up from last year. Keep trying.
- Gave mom a virus by coughing in her face 20 times. Way to share!
- 14 trips to the ER. Impressive!
- Shoes lost: 15. Because why lose an even number? Also how? We don’t know but way to be a magician I guess.
Adoptive Mom Wrapped 2024
I think it’s sometimes fun to have data to back up things about ourselves in a quantifiable way. I like knowing how many new words I’ve learned, how many miles I’ve run, how far I’ve pushed myself.
It could be easy to get caught up in the numbers and lose the plot, though. At what point am I doing things because I’m expected to instead of for the fact I enjoy them, or it’s important? Am I feeding anxiety by insisting on doing something that is overall inconsequential? Maybe.
As I think about this time of year when many people are looking at personal stats and making lists of what goals they want to accomplish next year I wonder how much pressure I’m putting on my family without realizing it. I want them to do well for their own sakes, not because of honor roll, or to win awards in sports. Are those things good? Yes. Is it more important that they learn a good work/life balance now so they don’t burn out later? Also yes.
All of that smacked me in the face the other day when my daughter had a panic attack about her grades. We try to emphasize that we care more about their understanding than getting high grades, but peer pressure is unavoidable. So, instead of being upset she didn’t understand the math, she was angry she had a low grade. When we tried to explain the thing she was struggling with she insisted it didn’t matter because it wouldn’t impact her grade to learn it now. So, clearly, we have some work to do on that front.
As much as I enjoy a list of achievements, I really hope I can convince my kids that they are so much more than that. I hope they know how special they are and how much they mean to me. I want them to know that I care more about who they are than the things they can do.