Growing up to be just like mom has its upsides

By Laurie Davies

In kindergarten you wanted to be her. In eighth grade you wouldn't dare to be seen with her. At your first baby's birth, you needed her. And after soothing a hundred fears and packing a thousand lunches, you finally understand her.

She's your mom. Sometimes you can't imagine a better confidante. Other times, a razor-thin line separates admiration from resentment. But when all is said and done, our mothers are our first—and usually our best—teachers. Here's a Mother's Day sampling of lessons they offer.

Laughter is the best medicine. On a recent school night in Tempe, Ariz., Kelley Garver's daughter unloaded that most volatile of adolescent anxieties. Boy trouble. We found a way to laugh about it. Then we were cracking up until we were crying," says the 34-year-old mother of two.

Then it hit her. She was just like her mom. My mom helps us find humor in almost everything," Garver says. That laughter thing comes in real handy sometimes." In fact, Garver and her two sisters have bought homes on the street where their mom, Patricia Smith, still lives.

You can be anything you want to be—just not all at once.

In the 1960s and '70s, women raised families, kept a tidy home, crashed the glass ceiling and even burned a few bras. It turned out to be a lie that we can do it all. That reality hits all of us in different ways," Smith says.

Garver, for example, knew the timing was right when she quit her job teaching preschool. I loved my preschool kids, but I was forgetting my own kids," she says.

Others, says Rosanna Hertz, Ph.D., chair of the Women's Studies Department at Wellesley College, learn to prioritize differently. This generation wants it all, but they don't need to be at the top the way their mothers did," she says.

Hertz also says today's younger women should take a cue from their moms and be less perfect. I don't think our mothers sat around and graded themselves like this younger generation does. So what if we leave the house with the beds unmade and the dishes not done?"

You are what you eat.

So, not everything Mom told you about food was true. Gum won't sit in your stomach for seven years and you don't have to starve a fever. Still, when you were a kid, Drink your milk" and One more bite of broccoli!" formed a litany like Chinese water torture.

Until you grew up and realized Mom was right. You learned that bone mass peaks in your 20s and a good diet can help shield you from everything from cancer to heart disease.

Play time is essential.

Hertz believes older generations of moms had it right when it came to playing. I understand the fear that your kids won't get a good job. But your kid is 3 years old," she says, encouraging moms toward free play.

In other words, make more messes. Play with no purpose at all. Mothers feel that everything today has to have an agenda. But the old-fashioned 'Let's bake together' or 'Let's color together' propositions are fine and fun," Hertz says.

Make time for you.

Today's young mothers are raising their kids in a different world. I used to be able to iron clothes and watch through the window while my kids played on the street," Hertz says. You can't leave your kids out to do that anymore. Today's mom is always on duty."

So, while our moms took breaks on the fly, we need to be intentional about scheduling time away. Join a social or volunteer group. Get regular massages. Or take your mom out to lunch.

After all, both of you deserve it.