Recently I came across a study that impacted me. The study commenced in the 193o s and covered 70 years. The study’s objective was to determine factors of success and happiness. the one area where there was a high indicator of success and happiness later in life was happiness in family life as a child. The book published in 2012 reports , “many measures of success throughout life are predicted less reliably by financial and social advantage than by a loved and loving childhood.” a warm childhood correlates more with achievement than intelligence, social class, or athleticism. the study also found that “what goes right in childhood predicts the future far better than what goes wrong.” one of the facts that just jumped off the page for me was the influence a mother has on her children. it was the mother specifically who spoke lovingly and with affection that had the greatest impact for good on a child. A loving relationship between a mother and her child resulted in a lasting lifetime of happiness for that child.
Raise your hand if you want your child to be successful … of course you do. We all do. I wish I wasted a lot less time as a mother of young children worrying over what activities to put them in and how we could afford it. I’m pretty sure I was blessed with relative poverty because I would have put my kids in everything and stressed us all out to the max by doing so! and for what? I don’t care or even want my kids to be a professional athlete or a famous movie star. I want them to be happy. I want them to do some good in the world and fulfill their God given destiny of exaltation.
I can give them that, and it doesn’t cost a cent! It is the simplest thing in the world to do. Love them. I can show how much I love them by what I say and do. Teach them. I can teach them by what I say and do that God comes first in my life. I love it when Kate says ” I love you mom so, so much! but do you know who I love even more than you?…Heavenly Father and Jesus!” melts my heart every time.
I can give them my time. President uhctdorf spoke the truth when he said, Love really is spelled T.I.M.E.
I have had this quote memorized or the past decade, I love it. it has been like a north star to guide me when mothering gets hard. I was there when a prophet of God whom I loved and prayed for said it.
“You have nothing in this world more precious than your children. When you grow old, when your hair turns white and your body grows weary, when you are prone to sit in a rocker and meditate on the things of your life, nothing will be so important as the question of how your children have turned out. It will not be the money you have made. It will not be the cars you have owned. It will not be the large house in which you live. The searing question that will cross your mind again and again will be, How well have my children done?
If the answer is that they have done very well, then your happiness will be complete. If they have done less than well, then no other satisfaction can compensate for your loss.
Let your first interest be in your home. The baby you hold in your arms will grow quickly as the sunrise and the sunset of the rushing days.
If with all you have done there is an occasional failure, you can still say, “At least I did the very best of which I was capable. I tried as hard as I knew how. I let nothing stand in the way of my role as a mother.”
president Gordon B. Hinckley
