We are heading to the Keys for a week-long vacation soon, and so I loaded the kids to head over to Target for the dreaded bathing suit purchase. Can we all agree that fitting rooms are awful? The lighting makes me look like an eskimo, the three-paneled circus mirrors make my stretch marks look like deflated balloons, and the super thin partition walls make it easy for everyone to hear me crying.

The experience simply can't be worse

Or can it?

I shoved the kids into the family-sized fitting room and gave them my phone to play with while I tried on a few swim suits. I had just gotten one on when my daughter Gracie casually looks up from the game she was playing on my phone and says to me, "You look ugly without your clothes on." And then she went right back to playing her game, as if nothing had happened.

As if she hadn't kicked me in the gut that I still try to blame on baby weight, even though my kids are in elementary school.

As if she hadn't knocked all the air out of my sagging chest.

As if she hadn't mean girled me in those super thin partitioned walls, ensuring that every other woman in there heard my shame.

I have pretty thick skin, but there is not enough thick skin in the world to prepare you for standing in an ill-fitting, cheap mom tankini in a fluorescent lit fitting room while someone criticizes your body.

I put my incredibly hurt feelings aside and immediately went into parenting mode. I snatched my phone away from Gracie and got down on her level and said in my most serious voice, "We do not talk to people like that, Gracie. That hurts my feelings. I would never say something mean like that to you. You need to apologize to me."

To her credit, Gracie seemed to immediately realize she had broken some kind of unspoken girl code, and her eyes welled up and she apologized. I wanted to continue rubbing her face in it until I felt better about myself, but I resisted and instead took off the bathing suit, put it back on it's hanger, and we left.

I don't know which bothered me more about that moment - that I felt ashamed and embarrassed of my body or that Gracie was capable of saying something so mean without any remorse. I've gotten over the hurt feelings. In fact, I bought myself a super cute bathing suit. And I'm going to wear it proudly and confidently.

As for Gracie, I talked to her later that night as I tucked her into bed. I explained to her that all bodies are different shapes and sizes and that speaking unkindly to someone about the way that they look is very hurtful to others. We talked about what nice things we can say to people to make them feel good about themselves and about what other people have said to us at different points that made us feel good. I'm sure the talk could have veered down the "it's what's inside that counts" path, but I really wanted Gracie to understand that words have the power to hurt others. We can focus on the body image another day.

Being a woman is hard. Being a mom is hard. Being a mom raising a little woman in hard. Bathing suit season is hard. Fitting rooms are hard.

But you know what's not hard? Being kind. Saying kind things to other women and girls. Making people feel good about themselves. And that's a lesson I want my daughter to learn.

Editor's note: This article was originally published on Katie Brown's website, Marriage Confessions. It has been republished here with permission.

The post I was mean girled by my own daughter appeared first on FamilyToday.

Every so often, someone emails me to ask what I think the secret to marriage is. Chris and I usually have a good chuckle at how we have fooled everyone into thinking we're "experts" in this area; but then we finally sit in somber silence and stare into space as we realize our marriage is built on what appears to be a pretty crappy philosophy. Seldomly do I give our real answer when I respond because I'm embarrassed Chris and I have adopted the following as a foundational pillar of our marriage. But, it works.

Our secret to a happy marriage?

Lower your expectations.

That's right, friends. Lower your expectations. I think most of the time people go into marriage expecting fairy tales, romance, and sunsets. That may sum up about the first month. But afterward, the sparkle begins to dim, the wedding dust settles, and you're left standing next to this incredibly flawed and incredibly HUMAN person. I was shocked to discover that Chris would not serve me breakfast in bed every Sunday morning. What kind of animal had I married?!

Around our one year anniversary, I realized if I took all expectations out of our marriage, I was actually pretty happy. I no longer expected him to bring home flowers, to sit next to me and tell me how beautiful I was while I did laundry, or yearn to go grocery shopping with me on a Saturday morning. Once I let go of those expectations, Chris became a stellar husband because when you marry a good person, they are going to exceed your expectations-whether you set them or not.

So, when he randomly shows up with flowers on a Tuesday night, I am always blown away because...FLOWERS! So unexpected. Or, when he offers to cook dinner so I can write or read or wrestle the kids into the bathtub, I am always taken aback because...THOUGHTFUL! And so unexpected.

Now, many people will hear this philosophy and immediately think something like, "What a terrible way to live a marriage." But to these nay-sayers, I say, "Give it a whirl." Lower your expectations and see what happens in your marriage.

Not long ago, there was this amazing article on parenting that went around Facebook. It was about how we need to be parenting more like our parents parented us, which was basically to push us outside and tell us to, "Go play!" As the author wrote, my entire childhood flashed before my eyes. I remember my mom and dad kicking my siblings and me of the house on Saturday mornings, only allowing us back inside for mealtimes.

If I fell down, my mom didn't know about it until I wandered home around dinner time. So, I learned to pick myself up and dust myself off. If a friend and I got into a squabble, my mom wasn't there to help us work it out with "kind words" or "listening ears." We just learned that no one would play with us if we weren't nice. If a bike chain broke, my dad wasn't standing there next to me to fix the bike and get it moving again. I learned instead how to flip that bike over and fix the darn chain myself.

The Facebook article reminded me that some of the best experiences of my childhood happened because my parents weren't involved.

That's why Chris and I are taking our marriage philosophy and making it our parenting philosophy, too.

It's time we lowered our expectations as parents

I cannot attend four birthday parties, six play dates, five family dinners, baseball practice, baseball games, swimming lessons, ballet, and Sunday church all in one weekend. I just can't do it. It's expensive, time consuming, and at the end of the day, our kids may go to bed worn-out and satisfied; but Chris and I are left sitting exhausted on the couch, staring at the TV because we have no energy left to give to anything we would actually like to do.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love having an active family. I love having a place to go, something to do, an activity, or an outing. I will drag my family to theme parks and playgrounds and splash pads 9 times out of 10 because I want to get out of the house, even more than they do.

But here is what I've started doing: I've stopped entertaining my children at home when I don't want to or when I'm busy. If Gracie comes up to me and wants me to stop what I'm doing to fix her toy so it can play "Let It Go" for the 481st time that day, I let myself say no. Or, if we're out somewhere they don't want to be-like Ikea or Home Depot-and the kids are complaining and whining, I tell them to pipe down and deal. Actually, I say, "then drive yourself home!" and they laugh.

And I laugh.

And they laugh nervously.

And I keep shopping.

And they stop laughing.

And, you know what?

We're all okay.

Today is a very different world to raise children in than when I was little. I can't kick my kids outside all day because the world just isn't the same anymore. But, I can start remembering the importance of independence and self-sufficiency. I can take steps to bring those attributes into my kids' lives by lowering my expectations of parenthood.

So, yes. I am lowering my expectations of motherhood. Will some call me a slacker? I'm sure. But, here's the thing"¦

Sometimes, kids need to feel a little uncertain. Sometimes, they need to solve a problem for themselves. Sometimes, they need to not get their way. Sometimes, they need to wait. Sometimes, they need to do things that are not necessarily "kid-friendly" because do I want to raise fragile, rare flowers that only blossom and grow when the sunlight, water, and temperature are exactly perfect?

No! I want to raise WILDFLOWERS. I want to raise a kid who can grow anywhere. Who can bloom when nothing else around them does. I want to raise a kid who can rise up in between the cracks of the sidewalks.

I don't want to raise children in a world that revolves around them because when they are not children anymore, the world most definitely will not revolve around them. And what kind of cruelty is that for me to push them out into that world without any preparation? So, I'm prepping them now:

Go play.

Read that book yourself.

Fix that toy on your own.

Find something to do.

Work it out between the two of you.

Be happy about it, or go do something else.

And, you know what? I feel really good about it.

Editor's note: This article has been previously published on Marriage Confessions. It has been modified and republished here with permission.

The post Lowering the bar on motherhood and raising standards for my children appeared first on FamilyToday.