How much of your time do you spend teaching your children how to correct their mistakes? Probably quite a bit of it! The thing to remember, though, is that you will make mistakes, too. Even as a parent, you will be constantly learning how to correct your own mistakes that you make during your time as a mother. Protecting your child is going to be your first priority, but you’re going to be exhausted. You’re may forget to close the baby gate. You’re likely to be so preoccupied that one day you might forget that your child is in their car seat and you’ll shut the door before remembering them. It doesn’t make you a bad parent; it just means that you make mistakes.

When it comes to driving, Mom’s everywhere are making mistakes. Not falling asleep at the wheel or drinking before getting in the car but being so distracted by the children in the back and being so preoccupied that before you know it, you’re a few miles too fast and you’ve got points on your licence. There are companies here like americansafetycouncil.com/content/florida-online-traffic-school that can help you with that and looking at your driving habits can also help. We pass binky’s back to the baby, send texts declaring lateness to the childcare provider and soothing crying babies, all while driving through busy traffic. The idea here isn’t to make you feel bad about your driving habits, but to educate you on what you can do to improve them. Mistakes are inevitable, but if you can avoid mistakes that risk your lives, it’s best to do so!

Distractions. In the car with children, distractions are going to be inevitable. However, that doesn’t mean that you have to pass anything to the kids, or check your email, or send a text. If you absolutely need to deal with the ruckus in the back seat, pull over safely and deal with it. Perhaps come up with a system for the kids where they get stickers for every journey that they do where they are polite, calm and relatively quiet.

Phone. It’s not nice to run late, but there are things that you can do so that you don’t end up using your phone while driving. Don’t be that driver that is so distracted with their phone that they crash. Switch your phone to silent and pop it in the glove compartment. You could also hook your phone up to your car so that you can use it for music and answer calls on speakerphone as you need to. Make calls and texts BEFORE you get in and pull over to answer anything urgent.

Sleep. It’s common knowledge that mother’s do not get enough sleep, but why put yourself in danger by getting behind the wheel on an hour of broken rest? Before you get behind the wheel, ask yourself whether you REALLY need to drive right now, or can someone else go for you?

Make mistakes, Mom, but learn from them.