Julia Roberts may not be the first person you would think to turn to for parenting advice. Although the actress has three children—17-year-old twins, Hazel and Phinnaeus, and a 15-year-old son, Henry Daniel—she often keeps quiet about her personal life.
Roberts even moved from Hollywood to New Mexico when her twins were born in 2004 as a way to keep her children out of the spotlight. However, the award-winning actress has recently given advice that all of us mothers should hear, and it’s struck a chord with someone else you may know.
Roberts’ Sound Parenting Advice
How often does Roberts talk about her children? It’s very rare. All you have to do is scroll through Roberts’ Instagram feed. You won’t find many posts about her children. In fact, most of the pictures of kids on her feed aren’t her three children.
In a recent interview with TODAY anchor Hoda Kotb, the actress (along with George Clooney) gave some rare insight about being a parent later in life. Roberts, 55, shared how she grapples with making mistakes with her kids.
“Sometimes I get gripped with fear of blowing it,” admitted the actress. “Sometimes I just say to my kids, ‘So today me as a mom, can we just take that off the board? Because I blew it.’”
Dylan Dreyer Definitely Relates
The interview has certainly touched a nerve with many mothers, including one mom who happens to be a meteorologist at NBC, Dylan Dreyer. Dreyer has taken Roberts’ advice to heart.
As the meteorologist recently told TODAY Parents, “Julia Roberts was on the show talking to Hoda about how sometimes you’re gonna have a bad mom day, but you can just make up for it the next day and have a better mom day.”
Just like Roberts, Dreyer is also a mom to three kids: Calvin, 5; Oliver, 2; and Rusty, 13 months. Apparently, the advice from Roberts was just what the meteorologist needed to hear.
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“There are days where I just feel like I don’t want to put in the extra effort. I just want to get to bedtime. I just need to go to sleep,” Dylan remarked. “It makes me feel so much better that everybody has that moment at some point.”
Tomorrow Can Be A Better Mom Day
From mom guilt and shame to feeling like we have to do our best all the time, many mothers have unrealistic expectations. However, those unreasonable expectations aren’t necessarily ones that we’ve put on ourselves.
We often see other moms who seem to be doing it all: cooking meals from scratch, gracefully taking their kids from one activity to the next on the weekends, and ensuring that meal times are spent together as a family. Although these parents do exist, many mothers are struggling with keeping up with day-to-day tasks.
As a mother to three kids in elementary school, I’ve certainly had to come to terms with what’s reasonable and what’s unrealistic for my children. The pressure to do more comes from societal expectations to be sure, but it also comes from me.
Even on days that I feel like I’m at my best with my kids, I still have moments when I feel like I’m not doing enough. More accurately, when I feel like I’m not doing well enough.
Then there are days that are complete chaos from beginning to end: Nothing goes as planned; the kids are whining all day long. There aren’t enough hours in the day to do the many loads of laundry, dishes, errands, pickups, and drop-offs needed to keep things together.
Then to top it all off, a kid gets sick, or the oven breaks. Not to mention, I don’t have any time to just be and take in the precious moments I have with my children.
We’re All Going To Blow It
In reality, we’re all going to have days where things simply don’t go as planned, just like Roberts explained.
The thing is, we all have a choice to make when we do make mistakes with our kids. We can choose to feel guilty for not being super mom or we can tell ourselves that we’re human. All of us parents are going to get things wrong every now and then.
The truth is, sometimes we even need to apologize to our kids for our mistakes. But that means that we’re learning from our faults and teaching our kids a valuable lesson. They’ll learn from us that admitting when you’re wrong isn’t a weakness, but rather a strength.
On those days when we make mistakes, we—and that includes this mom of three—would do well to heed Roberts’ advice and show up the next day as a better mom.
