Heidi Klum saves drowning son: Supermodel supermom vs. the good enough mother (+video)
Heidi Klum saves drowning son – so go the entertainment headlines today. Hey, normal moms, how are you feeling? Is Heidi Klum setting the parenting bar impossibly high? Don't worry. Being a good mom is good enough.
Heidi Klum saves drowning son: The supermodel saved her son from a riptide on vacation in Hawaii and, in doing so, set the bar impossibly high for other parents just trying to be good to their kids. But hey, being good to your kids is good enough. March 2013.
Chris Pizzello, Invision/Associated Press
As parents we strive to be great at the job, but seeing a flawless, sun bronzed Heidi Klum wade into the surf in a bikini and save her son, plus two nannies from a riptide would give David Hasselhoff an inferiority complex. How often do we believe we need to be supermodel supermoms and is being a good mother ever good enough?
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Lisa Suhay, who has four sons at home in Norfolk, Va., is a children’s book author and founder of the Norfolk (Va.) Initiative for Chess Excellence (NICE) , a nonprofit organization serving at-risk youth via mentoring and teaching the game of chess for critical thinking and life strategies.
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Heidi Klum and her family were on vacation in Oahu, Hawaii, Sunday when her oldest son Henry, 7, was caught in a dangerous riptide, as were two of his nannies, reports Entertainment Tonight.
The photos are a cross between a dramatic Disney movie moment and a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
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Vundermom just made lifting a bus off your kid — via hysterical strength (that supposed superhuman strength rush parents get when offspring are in mortal peril) — passé by lifting an ocean off her child.
"We got pulled into the ocean by a big wave. Of course, as a mother, I was very scared for my child and everyone else in the water,” Ms. Klum told ET. “Henry is a strong swimmer and was able to swim back to land. We were able to get everyone out safely."
I love it. It’s the most inspiring story of the day, but then I had a look in the mirror, at the unfolded pile of laundry and the fact that last time I took the kids to the beach I ended up in the hospital after being hit by a longboard.
I was able to find some solace in little paperback I’ve been reading called “Good Enough Mothering,” by Elaine Heffner, a psychotherapist and parent educator in New York City and senior lecturer of education in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. Her blog is full of answers.
“I see mothers trying to be perfect. ‘Good enough’ doesn’t feel good enough. How did that happen?” Heffner writes. “Perhaps, deep down inside we all wish life could have been perfect for us as children, and so we are too ready to agree with our children that we should be able to make life perfect for them. But we can’t — and that makes us feel guilty.”
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