Phrases Moms Need to Stop Using At Each Other

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Momming is a job and just like any job, we develop our own unique language. We probably know what CIO and BLW mean. We've actively discussed color, consistency, and frequency of shit our precious angels have produced. However, there are some phrases we need to stop using. Some because they are woefully outdated. And some because they are just dick things to say.

Moms, we can do better. Let's drop the following from our vernacular.

Boy Mom / Girl Mom

Setting aside the whole gender identity discussion, can we stop with the boy mom or girl mom thing? Okay, Susan, you squatted out a whole slew of penis-havers. And yeah, boys are insanity contained in flesh. But there are plenty of girls who are twice that. Shannon, I love that your daughter wears bows twice the size of her face. Adorbs. But your tiny ball of sugar and spice is harboring some serious psycho energy and you know it.

Universally speaking, kids are suicidal ninjas, hell-bent on dying in the stupidest ways regardless of sex or gender. Look, most of us are outnumbered by our own spawn. Can we stop trying to divide ourselves by proudly proclaiming BOY MOM! any time your son leaps of something screaming like a deranged pterodactyl? Support each other. Learn from each other. It takes a village and all that jazz. Because some day, all these loud, rough and tumble, fearless kids are gonna meet these sensitive, quiet, secretly evil-genius kids and they're gonna have to know how to cope.

SAHM - Stay At Home Mom

I am normally pretty good with words and I curse fluently, but I don't know enough curse words to adequately express how much I despise this phrase. If you're a regular to Momma Cusses, this is not new information for you either. Really, it's the stay that kills it for me. Stay implies that you simply hang out all day, existing in conjunction with your children. That couldn't be further from the truth. We have deadlines, projects, shitty managers, and a task list. We have a job description and tasks we'd rather not do. Moms are in charge of managing personnel and personalities, mediation, customer service, food prep, sanitation and hazardous material handling. This list goes on. We are not "staying" at home. We are working our asses off.

Oh just wait until...

No, Karen. we're not going to wait. We're actively struggling now. We don't need to wait to have a hard time. Sure, we are going to get older and so will our kids. They'll find new, inventive ways to defy or challenge us and our bodies will do the same. But we don't need to wait for that to have a feeling or two now. We need to bitch. We need to moan. We need to lament, vent, and whine. Sometimes that's enough to make us feel just a bit better. We are comparing our rides on the struggle bus. We're sharing a bit about this most recent leg of the trip.

At any rate, what exactly are you trying to do here with this "Just you wait?" Make us feel better by cheerily informing me it's going to get fucking worse? Or are you trying to make yourself feel better for all the younger, spritelier days you took for granted. Stop. Just...stop.

Enjoy every minute...

I've long held the opinion that motherhood is a thousand inconveniences, tiny problems to solve, and mountainish molehills to summit. And every once in a while, we get a tremendous joy as pay for the effort of mothering tiny people. Now those joys are monumentous - the kind that stop time and will be forever engraved on our hearts. The freshly washed baby smell, the perfectly timed snuggle to cap off the worst day ever, that tiny flash of sudden understanding that flits across your child's face when they figure something out all by themselves. These joyous milliseconds of motherhood are exactly what we live for and gleefully field the thousand struggles to get there.

But we aren't gonna enjoy every minute. We're just not going to. And we need to stop telling moms to enjoy every minute. No, they won't be this little forever. Thank God. Yes, there will come a time when they won't need us as much - but that's kind of the point of it all, isn't it? We have kids and want to teach them to be the best human they can be, to function without us. To be strong and fierce and independent, always knowing that Momma's got their back. We'll be right there with a tissue, a hug, a brownie, or a momma bear right hook - whatever they need, whenever they need us.

Now, I'm not going to claim I've never said these things. In fact, with the exception of the boy/girl mom thing, I've said all of them. I'm not proud of it, but there it is. I'm not perfect. Far from in fact. But I am now making a concerted effort to never say any of these things again. Mainly because they don't really do much for anyone. Motherhood is hard, it is sometimes isolating, and the minute we have one thing figured out, four more new "issues" pop up. The least we can do is support one another. It can start with how we communicate with one another.

Stay fierce, bitches.