Good at Working: What My Son's Mother's Day Gift Didn't Make Me Do

Yesterday, I almost had a working mom guilt moment. My son had excitedly presented me with this lovely gift (pictured) he made in school and as I read it, I saw it – She is SO Good at – and he wrote Working. A few years ago, that might have been enough to send my anxieties spiraling out of control wondering if I wasn’t present enough or too focused on my work or hundreds of other fears that would troll my mind likely for days if not weeks.

But this time, I didn’t. As I hugged him, thanking him for such a thoughtful gift, I took a breath thought about the positives that statement might have meant.

Most obviously, he might be connecting the value of me working with the value of things he can get (let’s not pretend that most 6 year olds aren’t in it for themselves) but even in that lies an important lesson that my husband and I can only hope he’s learning along the way. Things have value and neither his father nor I buy things indiscriminately. We prioritize and we spend well within our means. But we also give to our community and save for the future (including his future). We just started him on his allowance and he’s learning very quickly that there are things he can afford to buy and many, many more things he can’t, and that sometimes he has to make hard choices, which may include not buying anything at all. He’s also learning the importance of setting aside some money to help someone else out. So, as he grows older, I hope that he sees me as a good influence on how to spend, save and share money and applies those lessons in a way that will allow him to live the life he wants. ?

Then I thought that perhaps he sees how much I love my work. Although far too young to know exactly what he wants to do (though train engineer seems to be a consistent theme), maybe he sees the importance of doing something that makes him happy so he will feel more comfortable pursuing studies that lead him down a path to a job that makes him feel fulfilled. I’ve had a relatively straight- lined career path, but each job has allowed me to better mold and shape what I like to do, what I can do but don’t particularly like doing and what I absolutely have no talent for. It’s helped me get to a point in my career where I’m pulling on my core strengths yet still challenging myself, where I’m able to deprioritize the things I don’t really like doing because I don’t really need to do them – at least not now - and continue to build a village of people who can counterbalance the activities that I have no talent for and probably spent wayyyy too many years trying to be good at. He may be lucky and land his dream job right away or he may struggle for years, but I hope that through me he can see that it’s possible to get to a point where he can love his work and feel energized by it.

Finally, maybe he sees the benefits of teamwork. Whenever we do our Friday night Shabbat gratefuls and I mention how grateful I am for my team at work, perhaps he’s seeing that there are very few things in life that one can go alone. That it’s important to work together to solve problems and sometimes just get things done. As a true introvert, having my solitude to think through problems is crucial BUT there is nothing that can replace the importance of bringing in different voices to think through problems and provide important angles that will make the final product better. While he’s a little bit of an independent soul at this moment, I hope that the more he sees and hears me talk about the benefits of team work, that he knows how good it is to bring people in and how important it is to share the outcomes – whatever they are.

Those who know me know that it’s taken me a very long time to get to this point. That isn’t to say that tomorrow, I won’t relapse and start socking money away for his future therapist, but at least yesterday, I felt that maybe my son sees my working in a positive light – as something I’m good at – along with making pancakes. Going to take him a while to catch up to me on that one. ?