When the Best Cheerleader Is You
There's no performance review in motherhood. So you have to learn to give yourself the gold stars.
There's no performance review in motherhood.
No manager telling you you're doing a great job. No colleagues cheering you on after a hard day. No pay rise to show you're getting it right.
Just you. And the feedback you get from your kids — which isn't always a true reflection of your effort.
The Job Nobody Validates
I'd always wanted to be a mum.
I threw myself into it — five children in six years. It was a 24/7 job, and I chose to stay at home, which meant the career I'd trained for — teaching — became something I only practised within my own four walls.
In the classroom, there'd been feedback. Support. Other adults to bounce ideas off when you were having a rough day. Colleagues who'd notice when something went well and say so.
At home, it was just me.
Trying to figure out which advice to follow. Juggling five different personalities. Trying to parent in a way that felt authentic to me, without anyone checking in to say: you're doing this right.
No one was handing out gold stars.
So I had to learn to give them to myself.
The Feedback Gap
Here's something nobody prepares you for:
In almost every other area of adult life, effort gets acknowledged in some way. A finished project. A salary. A colleague who notices. A goal achieved that you can point to.
In parenting, the feedback loop is broken.
You spend an hour making a nutritious meal and your children whinge through every bite.
You plan a beautiful afternoon out and it ends in tired tantrums and a missed nap.
You hold your patience through something that would have broken a lesser person — and nobody sees it.
You get to the end of the day and look around at the mess and the chaos and genuinely wonder: what did I actually do today?
Everything. You did everything. And most of it was invisible.
The Friend Test
I want to ask you something.
If a friend came to you — exhausted, second-guessing herself, wondering if she's doing any of it right — what would you say to her?
You'd tell her how well she was doing. You'd point to the things she couldn't see herself. You'd remind her that her children are fed and loved and safe, and that it matters even when it doesn't feel like it.
You'd cheer her on.
So why don't we do that for ourselves?
We offer our friends the encouragement, the compassion, the benefit of the doubt — and then turn around and give ourselves the harshest possible assessment of the same day.
Being your own cheerleader isn't arrogance. It's necessary.
It's what keeps you going when the feedback isn't coming from anywhere else.
What Backing Yourself Actually Looks Like
This isn't about positive affirmations you don't quite believe yet, or pretending hard days aren't hard.
It's about a few simple shifts in how you see yourself:
Believing in your own decisions
You know your child better than anyone.
You know your family, your circumstances, your values. The choices you make — even the imperfect ones — come from real knowledge and real love.
Back yourself. Not blindly. But with the confidence of someone who is genuinely trying — and who deserves credit for that.
Noticing the moments nobody else sees
The way you handled the meltdown this morning — quietly, without losing it — even though you were already tired before the day began.
The meal you made that nobody thanked you for.
The story you read when you could barely keep your eyes open.
The mind full of decisions you carried quietly so your child could sleep.
These things happened. They count. Even when nobody saw them.
Give yourself the gold star. You earned it.
Being grateful for the small moments
Not the big milestones. Not the first steps or the school plays or the photographs.
The small ones. The ones that disappear almost as they happen.
The way they laughed at something this morning. The way they reached for your hand without thinking. The way they still come to find you when they're upset, even on the days you feel like you've got it all wrong.
Those moments are yours. They're the reward the performance review doesn't capture.
Asking for Help Is Allowed Too
Being your own cheerleader doesn't mean going it alone.
Ask for help when you need it. That's not weakness — that's self-awareness.
What it means is this: in the spaces between the help, in the ordinary days when nobody is checking in — you are enough. You don't need someone else to tell you you're doing well to know that you are.
You get to decide that.
What I Know Now
Looking back on those years of five children under six, of home educating, of halving our income and saying no to a lot of things so I could be present — I can see the wins now in a way I couldn't always see them then.
Not the tidy house (rarely). Not the perfect meals (definitely not). Not the children who always behaved and never pushed back (absolutely not).
The wins are the people they became.
Confident, kind, independent adults who still come home and sit around the table. Who treat people well. Who know they're loved and know how to love in return.
I couldn't see that when I was in the middle of it.
So if you can't see yours yet — I'm seeing it for you.
You are building something. It's just taking time to become visible.
Get Your Pom Poms Out
I mean this genuinely:
Don't be shy about celebrating how well you're doing.
Not to anyone else — just to yourself.
At the end of a hard day, instead of running through what went wrong, try running through what went right.
What did you do today that you didn't have to do?
What did you hold together when it could have fallen apart?
What did your child feel today because you showed up?
That's your performance review. Write it yourself.
Because you are doing well. You are the right person for this job. And you deserve to hear it — even if it has to come from you.
You're doing better than you think.
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Related Posts:
When Everyone Else Seems to Be Doing a Better Job Than You [link]
When Stress Builds and You Need to Let Something Go [link]
When Honest Conversations Make the Load Feel Lighter [link]
About Christina
I'm Christina, mum of five (now aged 16–22), infant sleep coach, trained primary school teacher, and class leader for Tots Play developmental classes in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire.
I spent years in a job with no performance review, no gold stars, and no colleagues to tell me I was doing it right. I learned to give those things to myself. And I want to help you do the same.