Mom or buddy?   You’ve seen it…a mom dressed like her teenage daughter, another mom who offers her son a beer while he watches the game, mothers who can’t bear their child not liking them… so they say yes when they should say no.  But when mom becomes a buddy, the child loses out on a more important relationship… that of mom and child.

In this week’s Learn a Latte, ispecialist Mark Merrill says your kids have plenty of friends, they need you to be a mom, and provide these three things:

• Boundaries: How to Create Boundaries for Your Children
• Love: 5 Ways to Show It to your Children
• Your Time: Avoid the “Busy Mom” Trap

Hi there, Perfectionist Mom. We know you well. We know how hard you try to hit the mark in every area of life: mothering, your career, homemaking, and serving your community. And we know how upset you are when one of the balls you’re constantly juggling tumbles to the ground in the form of a missed deadline, a drive-through dinner, or a ten-day backlog of laundry. The fact is—you’re hard on yourself. A little bit too hard.

As moms, we often cut others slack when we know they’ve tried, even if the outcome isn’t ideal. Why can’t we do the same for ourselves? Perfectionist moms live in a prison where tiny hiccups feel like disasters. It’s time we gave ourselves the same grace we extend to others with these 7 Ways Moms Need to Cut Themselves Slack. Remember: sometimes our worries are based on ideas that aren’t even valid, like these 11 Lies Moms Believe.

Remember, Mom: You’re doing okay, and getting better every day!

Now’s the time to start planning your summer.  Sign up for iMOM’s Operation Summer Lovin’ for 8 weeks of ideas, printables, and fun.

Your Saturdays can move from so-so to super, in just four easy steps.

1. Delicious Breakfast:  Make Saturday breakfast a tradition with this tasty breakfast idea. While your family is chowing down, have your children come up with a list of what they would like to do for fun later on.
2. Work Before Play: Get chores and to-dos out of the way so you can move on to fun.  Print out our  Clean Up Cards and put them in a bowl.  Have your children draw out the cards until they’re all gone, turn on some fun cleaning music, and begin!
3. Fun Time: Gather to look over the lists the kids made at breakfast.  Choose an activity from their list or use our Family Fun Time Cards to get started.  You can also surprise your children with a special outing you’ve already planned.
4. Conversation Closer: Close out the day with a little bonding over our Saturday TALK Conversation Starters.

Oh, we mean well. We really do. With all of our intentional parenting and charts and checklists, we Type-A moms are determined to help our kids be all they can be, and by golly, we’re going to make it happen. If planning and managing can do it—it’s going to get done.

But we get-it-done moms sometimes get a little too caught up in achieving the objective (better grades, a neater room, stronger skills in some activity), and forget that our kids are just people. Flawed, fragile, wonderful little people. And sometimes they need a relationship with us that is more about nurturing and bonding than about checking something else off the to-do list.  So try one of our 8 Great Ways to Bond With Your Child to slow down and just be together—with no agenda.

Also read these confessions of an over-project-managing mom, and you may see glimpses of yourself in her story.

Then, iSpecialist Dr. Greg Smalley offers his thoughts on 6 Ways  to Build a Lifelong Friendship with Your Child that may help you connect. Remember, the more in-tune you are with your child, the more easily you’ll be able to achieve all those other parenting objectives on the list.

Wait!  Don’t blink or before you know it, it will be time for your children to leave for college. Even if that’s still years away for your kids, or even if they’re heading off to college much sooner, there are things you can do today to help them prepare.  You don’t want to be like a friend of mine who on the day her daughter left for college, tried to tell her all of the things she’d forgotten to teach her – “Wash your dark clothes in cold water!  Don’t take ibuprofen on an empty stomach!  Don’t get in a car with someone you don’t know!”

Start now to prepare your kids for college.

• 10 Things Your Teen Should Know How to Do Before They Leave Home
• 10 Things Your Teen Should Have Before They Leave Home
• Printable College Packing List