The other day I was at a BBQ at my MIL’s house and was talking to a mom who’s kids are pretty grown. We were talking about Christian and she said something that really made sense to me. She told me that her pediatrician once told her to live by the mommy 20/60/20 rule. That means that 20% of the time you are an AMAZING mom…60% of the time you are rather average….and the final 20% of the time you just suck. I liked that saying because now when I think I am being a “bad mom”, I can just throw that particular moment into the last 20% and focus on the remaining 80% in the future!

I don’t have too much experience, but lets face it…there are a lot of times I think I am an absolute failure. I remember my son being an infant and nursing in the middle of the night…changing him and putting him in his bassinet. I lay in my bed exhausted and I hear a rumbling in my little mans tushy…he pooped! Do I A. get up and change him with the possibility of waking him and losing precious sleep? Or B. Pretend I never heard anything and deal with it in 2 hours when he wants to nurse again? B of course! I felt bad…what a failure! Who knew I’d have so many more failures in the months to come.

It’s hard to say why or when I would I think I fall in the top 20%. That’s like a huge ego thing and I don’t really think I fall there too often. I thought I could fall there by making my son’s baby food…but I quit and failed at that one. You know the sad thing? I think the simplest victories are the most important to me. Like successfully transferring my sleeping son from the car to his room and throwing an audible and changing his diaper while he sleeps through the whole thing! That my dear readers is a HUGE Mommy Triumph in my day.

Bottom line is that most of the time we are all rather average. Even the moms you look at and think “How can they possibly be so put together?”. I would have to think that most of the time they are like the rest of us…average. We all want the same thing…our kids to grow up normal and happy. We do what we can to make it through the day with out losing patience too much, and I’ll go back to the most important thing…to have our kids be happy.

So if most of my days as a mom are average I am OK with that. Just thinking that I may be AWESOME 20% of the time is pretty cool…I’ll keep waiting for that to happen. And when I totally feel like a failure of a mom I will just move on and throw that day into the last 20%. I’m not good at math, but I think even I can figure out that the odds are in my favor that most of the time I’ll be A OK!

Do you agree with this 20/60/20 rule?