Are you proud of yourself?

Well are you? Are you proud of yourself? For anything? How many times have you said to yourself, "Self, you rock, I am so proud of you?"

I can honestly say I almost never feel proud of myself.  I try because I know in my head I have lots to be proud of in my life. Yet, there is a little voice saying "Noooo, what matters is what other people think."

Maybe there are people out there who are genuinely proud of themselves. Not the braggers, over confident people, I am talking about the people out there who don't need people to tell them, "Wow, I'm so proud of you."

Well I hope I'm raising two of these such people.

You see, it all started a year or so ago when I saw Marie Osmond being interviewed by Oprah after her son had committed suicide. When talking about his death, she said the one thing she regretted was not asking her son if he was proud of himself.

When I first heard this, I thought huh, that's a strange thing to regret. Did she not regret telling him how much she loved him or how special he was as a person? I was actually kind of shocked at her regret.

Then I started to really think about it and finally my one remaining brain cell went off like flashing ambulance lights.

Why DON'T we ask our kids if they are proud of themselves? Who gives a shit what we think! Marie was right, I should teach my kids that the one person they need to be proud of is themselves and not worry about impressing others. 

So that's exactly what I have been trying to do over the past  year. Every time I wanna say, "Wow, Mama is so proud of you", I say instead, "Sweetie, are you proud of yourself?"

Of course, they first reply, "But mama are you proud of me?" And I then say "Of course, but what matters is if You are proud of YOU. They usually appease me and say "Yeah I guess so Mama". Even though these responses were vague and they only said what they thought I wanted to hear, I persisted.

And guess what? It happened!! Just last week my 5 year old built a Lego helicopter all by himself and he showed it to me proudly. His face was beaming, it was a look I had never really seen before. His head was held high and his chest sticking out.

And that was when he said it, "Mama I'm so proud of myself! And you know why, because I made this all by myself, I did it!"

He really didn't have to say it, I could feel it. Tears in my eyes I said to him, "And that's all that matters!"

"Self, you are far from being Mother of the Year, but you are hanging in there! I'm proud of you."