As a mom for over fourteen years now, I realize I still have a lot to learn, but I’ve also already learned a LOT in my parenting journey. One lesson I’ll preach over and over again is that we as moms need to listen to our mother’s intuition — a gift God gave us that is extraordinarily priceless. Mine has alerted me to problems and issues with my kids several times in their younger years, given me hope during their struggles, and yelled TRUTH at me when I was doubting my parenting. As a parenting writer, I’ve read countless stories of moms who followed their mother’s intuition and went with their gut and ended up saving their kid’s lives, either by insisting on medical intervention, by keeping a seemingly “harmless” person out of their kids’ lives, or by showing up before their child was able to make a life-altering decision.
God gave us mother’s intuition for a reason. It’s as simple as that.
Yesterday when I was perusing Facebook, I came upon an article by Mindy Gallagher, an editor at Your Teen Magazine. The title intrigued me, so I clicked on it, and was treated with a mother’s intuition story that just confirmed my belief in “going with your gut.” In the brief article, Gallagher describes how one night when her husband was out of town for work, she’d given her 16-year-old son permission to go to his girlfriend’s house. “Not an unusual request,” explains, “and after being assured that her parents (whom I know and trust) would be home, the answer was, ‘Sure, have fun.’”
Gallagher got in her PJs and settled in for a night of Netflix all by herself (ah, the coveted ALONE TIME for a mom!) But before she could relax, her mother’s intuition suddenly snapped to attention. She says,
About an hour later, in my pajamas, with a bowl of ice cream in one hand and the remote in the other, I headed for the couch. Out of the blue, I remembered that the parents of one of my son’s friends were out of town for the weekend. “Hmmm. No they wouldn’t go there. Right? Also, I have never felt the need to check up on my kids, so why now?”
The answer to “Why now?” proved to be “Because my mother’s intuition wouldn’t let up!” Gallagher says that, unable to ignore the feeling, she hopped in her car, still wearing her PJs, and drove to the friend’s house. She reassured herself on the drive there that she was “just being stupid” and that there was no way her son’s car would be in front of his friend’s house when no parents were at home.
But of course, when she pulled up to the house, there it was. “My heart sank,” she says. She’d been lied to. As “anger took over the pit in my stomach,” she says, she hatched a plan.
First, she called her husband, just to make sure the plan wasn’t too outlandish. Always good to check yourself before you wreck yourself when you’re mad at your kid, after all. When he heard the plan, her husband said, “Go for it.” I’ll let Gallagher tell you what happened next.
Text to my son: “I can’t find my wallet, hoping I left it in the car—can you go check?”
Son: “You want me to check now?”
Me: “Yeah.”
