10 minutes to feel like a great mom. Because you are!

I saw Kristy again, when I was running errands today.

She’s the mom whose 6-year old daughter had her first green smoothie at Roxberry, my first GSG franchisee.

Kristy said, “I’m making them at home now. My daughter is totally okay with drinking green stuff because she saw them doing it at the smoothie store.”

Don’t underestimate third-party endorsement of a new or controversial idea. A five-year old seeing a 12-year old cousin “eating healthy” is huge. Tell the 12-year old that she’s rockin’ that five-year old’s world, because she might not know what power and influence she has.

I said to Kristy, because she was so excited: “It makes you feel like a good mom, huh.”

And you ARE a good mom for taking a bit of time, creating a habit, making sure your children get liquid greens that add up to 7 servings daily. (That’s a pint.) And then learning to make a big salad every night for dinner.

And then acquiring 10 main dishes in your repertoire that are plant-based whole-food meals. (You get the idea. You keep taking another step down the path.)

Modern moms feel far too much guilt. The Information Age has resulted in so much angst about a thousand angles of parenting–so it’s inevitable that we fall short in many, if not most of them!

Pick the simple but important low-hanging fruit, as a parent. Do the stuff that has the biggest impact for the least investment. For example, sometimes we’re checked-out and distracted when our child gives us the blow-by-blow of a TV show he watched. But when our child is distraught after being rejected by her group of friends at school, we drop what we’re doing, look her in the eye, and listen empathically. It’s not hard to do, and your child may remember that forever. We recognize the things that really matter.

If you can spend only 10 mins. in the kitchen–even if that is ALL the time you have–spend it making green smoothies rather than Orange Julius or ice cream shakes.

The green smoothies habit makes you feel good about your parenting. It doesn’t just support your children’s physical and emotional/mental health. It ameliorates the burden of Parent Guilt, which is an epidemic and which is so nonproductive.

When you have strengths, you can live with your weaknesses. This first habit I teach is an easy strength to cultivate, I think.

I’m not great at sewing my kids’ clothes and making Halloween costumes, or mending them, like my sister-in-law Kelli. I wasn’t great at sitting on the floor for hours playing with my little ones, like my friend Kim. I’m not the most patient parent, like my old neighbor Alice.

But I am really good at some core habits to feed my kids good nutrition.

(My other strengths include stretching my kids’ brains with intelligent conversations; teaching them that reading is fun; helping them find ways to be entrepreneurial; and teaching them about the value of work and accountability.) Hopefully these few strengths cover a multitude of other sins.

I hope you’ll spend a few minutes congratulating yourself for the areas within parenting you are darn good at. What are YOU good at? Parents need self-esteem too!

Posted in: Green Smoothies, Relationships