As mothers, we always want the best for our children.

The best milk, the best clothes, the best schools, the best enrichment courses. We do everything we can to ensure they get the best and nothing less.

However more often than not, we sometimes do not take care of ourselves in the same way. We eat the leftovers that our kids refused to eat. We spare no expense to dress them up but we wear clothes that may even be decades old.

In Singapore, there are even parents who sacrifice family vacations and other things, just so that they can send their kids to the best (read: most expensive) tuition centre in town! Heck, there are even parents who send their kids to two different preschools at the same time!

Parents spend so much time fussing over their children that I sometimes wonder if they do anything for themselves anymore. What about all the hobbies you used to do before you became parents?!

I know for me personally, I gave up my hobby of painting after I gave birth to my baby girl 2 years ago. I was so preoccupied with learning how to breastfeed, how to change her diapers and essentially how to be a mother that I chucked most of my hobbies aside just to take care of her.

And now that I’m back to the workforce full-time, the stress of juggling work and motherhood has suddenly brought to light my need to take time out to do the things that I like to do.

So some time ago I joined fellow Singaporean mum bloggers for some art therapy and rediscovered my love for painting. It was so therapeutic that I purposed in my heart to set aside me-time for art at least once a week! I headed straight to the store and bought myself some paint and a lot of canvases to get my artistic groove back on. I felt so happy just choosing paints and brushes!

Be it art, dancing, singing or even something as simple as a manicure, do take time out to do what you really love to do. You really do deserve to be pampered like a queen, once in a while!

P.S: I have many art projects lined up for the coming months and if you would like to see what I’m up to just hop on over to my blog =)

This is an original post to World Moms Blog from our writer, research psychologist and mother of one in Singapore, Madeline Heng. You can find Madeline at her personal blog, MadPsychMum @ University of Motherhood.

The image used in this post is credited to Tech109. It holds a Flickr Creative Commons attribution license.

Madpsychmum (Singapore)

Madeline lives in Singapore, a tiny cosmopolitan island in Southeast Asia. She is a mother to a beautiful and intelligent little girl born in July 2010. Madeline used to be a stay-at-home mother while she was completing her graduate studies in psychology at a local university. On completion of her studies, she has now joined the workforce and is working in the Ministry of Education (Singapore). Madeline is passionate about children and education and hopes to make a difference in the lives of children living in Singapore. Also an avid traveller and hardcore advocate of breastfeeding, she regularly documents her overseas trips and nursing room reviews with incredible detail on her blog, MadPsychMum @ University of Motherhood.

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