Mothers as Leaders
- Logan Fude
- Apr 10, 2023
- 10 min read
Updated: Apr 23, 2023
Interview by Logan Fude for
The Young Catholic Apostle
Guest: Chrystal Fude
Guest Bio: For my first ever interview on The Young Catholic Apostle, I would like to welcome my mom! Leader of a tribe of six children, all of which are (or were!) homeschooled and three of which have successfully graduated with associate degrees and are currently working on their bachelor’s in business. She is a chorister, gardener, welder, former member of the Air Force, and horse lover. She is a multitasking genius, and also takes care of the pets (though none of them are hers!) including two dogs, 20 chickens, and 7 ducks. Someday, she hopes to write a book on all of the laughable challenges of motherhood, but God is giving her other tasks at the moment! Welcome Chrystal!
(Read Chrystal's Full Profile Here)
Logan: For a little context, I think parenting as a form of leadership really hit me for the first time when I read Abby Wambach’s commencement speech.
To quote from Abby’s About page, “she is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, FIFA World Cup Champion, and six-time winner of the U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year award. She was the United States’ leading scorer in the 2007 and 2011 Women’s World Cup tournaments and the 2004 and 2012 Olympics”.
I think the reason it struck me so hard is because I am not a sports enthusiast, and I was reading it for coursework. I was really only giving the speech about half of my attention until it got to this line. She said, “the fiercest leading I’ve ever seen has been done between mother and child. Parenting is no bench. It just might be the big game.” I didn’t really expect to get anything out of reading the speech and was just trying to finish the assignment when I was left with this nugget.
Later that same semester, I wrote a two-part blog post on St. Therese and Servant Leadership. Now, taking a leadership class has made me more and more aware of how much potential parents have—mothers in particular—to be leaders to their children.
With that in mind, I have here for you a graphic from the Center for Creative Leadership outlining ten characteristics of a good leader.
If it’s alright with you I would just like to touch on each of them and ask you to provide some comments or an example of leadership for each.
Diving right in, one of the first characteristics of Leadership is integrity. For a business executive, integrity can be a different thing because you've got all of these oversight boards looking down on you. But you don't have any oversight boards as a mom…
Chrystal: No, but as a mom you're constantly being watched and imitated and critiqued.
L: It's like being followed around by mirror?
C: Yeah, you realize pretty early on how you look in their eyes and, when they mimic you, that can be kind of humbling.
L: I can imagine. I can't say as I've seen a toddler’s impression of anything that was flattering.
C: As soon as you start having children, the other thing you become extremely aware of is the separation of women amongst themselves. There begins immediately a comparison between your “mom skills” and somebody else's “mom skills”. It is further diversified and soon you have a stay-at-home-mom versus a working mom, and it can get hard really quickly.
L: Next we have delegation I imagine this has to be a tricky one…
C: No, no, because as soon as you have more than one child, you begin to realize you can't do it all and you start delegating tasks to the older child. [After all], you only have two hands, and it's pretty hard to make your mouth open a doorknob!
L: It sounds like you may have tried at one point or another!
C: I have been very creative, wanting to do it all. You start by being the perfect mom and then you realize somewhere along the way that being the perfect mom means you're going to create less than the perfect kid. You start realizing that “hey, why can't my kid just flush the toilet? Or fold a washcloth? Or, you know, like pick up after themselves?!”. Then you have to start delegating.
L: But it's not like you get to interview and hire the perfect person for that position…
C: No, you have to work with what there is. Of course, it's really easy to squash the child’s work ethic, so you have to be OK with the less than perfectly folded towel or the less than perfectly chore, because otherwise it's going to end pretty quickly.
L: Communication?
C: Well, you try and figure it out, but I haven't yet. Communication, in the beginning, is answering all of the “Whys”; driving down the road: “why is this…”, “why is that…”, “how is this…”, and “how is that…”. Kids are just sponges for communication in the beginning. And in the beginning, you have to give them all those communication skills, so you're talking constantly,
L: There might not be a lot of listening going on in the back seat because they're probably thinking of the next question… :)
C: *Chuckle* Well, and honestly you start making up answers. [Small child], “Who is that person?” [Mom], “Ted!” Kids don't come preprogrammed: everything from home schooling to how to do the most simple task and break it down. It’s a non-stop problem. In marriage and in parenting as well.
L: Self-awareness. Now I imagine this is going to have some similarities to the integrity one that we talked about earlier, but is there anything you'd like to add to that one?
C: I think they have a lot in common, but I think this one, to me, is mostly when you realize that you're parenting just like your mom, and you go, “Oh my gosh, did that work for her? Is it going work for me?” You have to start seeing yourself. As your kids grow up, it changes a lot too from self-awareness you know when they're little versus when they get older. I remember looking at my mom, and I wonder what you guys see looking at me. I don't think you'll even know until you're a mom.
L: Alright, then we have gratitude…
C: You realize, especially now, how much of a gift your children are from God, and begin to see God in their talents. Certainly, as a stay-at-home mom, you become really grateful for the ability to stay at home: for your husband and the money to make that possible. As you get older, you start being grateful that your body holds together, in hopes of seeing other generations down the road. Yeah, lots of gratitude. Lots of going to bed and saying, “OK God, they’re your kids too”, especially as they become teens, and you don't know what they're doing or if they're going to make it home safe. There's a lot of that letting go… [being] grateful that they are figuring out life. It isn’t going to be a success only journey, so just thankful that they're continuing to rebound at that. You are just grateful that [they’re] still trying and that [they’re] not making some really awful decisions.
L: Learning agility. Now I know you've got a little bit of a leg up on this one from home schooling…
C: I wouldn’t consider myself a very “smart” person. But in home schooling, you don't have any choice but to try and stay one step ahead of whatever your children are needing to progress through and answer their hard questions. You don't know how to do that most of the time, and you have to figure everything out as you go—from diarrhea and vomiting to what algebra course [to use in homeschooling]. It's so different for each kid, and you don't get any lead time on these things. It’s hard to navigate that obstacle course. Every kid is different! I thought after four kids, “I got this” but then, God bless Morgan for coming along, that changed everything up. And there's always new and better things (curriculum) to use; it’s hard to stay on top of it all.
L: You want to talk about [an example of] learning agility?! It wasn't that long ago that you had five students, one of which was learning to read “THE”, and then you had me (a sophomore in high school) getting ready for college.
C: That was a very strong stretch for the brain! And a baby nursing! You just go back to leaning on God.
L: [On any given day] You could go anywhere from answering algebra 2 questions to “hey mom, how do I write the letter B?” That is probably the ultimate example of learning agility!
L: Influence…
C: This spoke to [knowing that] your children are likely going do things the way that you did them, and so you have to try and have it together at all times. [You also have] to see God, and…see yourself through their eyes and hopefully you're a good example. But you also can’t be too overly confident or putting too much weight on that because that's a pretty crippling thought. It’s like Fr. Bob said, you “take one day at a time” and do the best you can. Some moments are holy, and some moments are not. Just try to limit the unholy moments and try to apologize when you realize that that wasn't the best thing to do, which is hard to do to a kid. It's easy to apologize to somebody that's an adult, but it's hard to apologize to a kid.
L: Yeah, I don't think little kids have a great concept of humility. Other adults know that it took something from you to offer an apology and to realize you were wrong, but kids are just like, “Oh yeah, I know…”.
L: Empathy?
C: I remember how it was for me growing up with two working parents, and so I try to fix the wrongs of my childhood. I probably spend too much time as a “helicopter mom”, but I’m just remembering how difficult it was to grow up and learn [without parents around]. Also as a mom, I realize how so many other kids grow up (without parents around), and it's sad. You just want to protect your kids from that environment and try to impart empathy to them.
L: Courage…
C: You have to keep going on the bad days. There are definitely those moments! I remember when you three [were very young] and had roto virus. There was an unbelievable degree of vomiting and diarrhea, and it went on for days! That was so horrible. This is a crazy world that you have to see this out in and to get up every day and do it again. I hope that I prepared you well, and that the world is not going to end tomorrow, just walking in that fear. There's a lot of fear as a mom; you're constantly being judged.
L: I'll never forget the day it occurred to me that the adults don’t actually have EVERYTHING all figured out. Young people are really used to anticipating that every day is going to hold something new because we just don't have it all figured out. We think it's not going to be that way for the grown-ups, but that really isn’t true!
C: *Chuckle*
L: It just hit me one day that every day is a new day for [grownups] too! It's not like you know this is their sixth time around the block or something; time keeps marching on!
C: Yeah, that never ends. And just when you think you have it figured out, you don’t!
L: And finally, number 10: respect. Now this can be teaching your kids to have respect for other people or it can be inspiring other people to respect you. I think, in a lot of ways, the two and two go together.
C: Yes, definitely both. [As a mom] you quickly have to draw lines in the sand on how you're going to be respected from your children, which is an unusual step too because they're cute little babies. But somewhere in those toddler years, things get a little bit more rocky. So then you have to start drawing the line in the sand. But also you have to respect their differences because they are not you, and they're not an extension of you, and you can't control everything that they do. So as a mom, you have to respect them. Of course, you have to teach them to respect others both in their personal space and in their ideas and there's an element of having to respect and honor yourself as a mom amidst other moms. Again, play dates [and homeschooling Co-Ops) can be kind of brutal [because of] comparison. We're our own worst enemies, and if only moms could unite and not judge each other and just to respect each other. Everybody just trying to do the best they can.
L: I think there is a ton of great information in all of those ten steps that it's really interesting to see, too, things can go all of all of those ten characteristics are actually very similar to things that you would see in a more corporate more traditional example of leadership. Everything from respect and setting standards for how you expect to be treated, all the way up to just being grateful because you know that any of these people working under you, at any given time, can choose to not serve, resign, or, if they are contract, just really stop performing. You have really, very little control over that. Are there any closing remarks that you would like to add?
C: I'm so glad that I didn’t know what I with my first child 20 plus years ago the enormity of what I was taking on. I'm glad that I didn't have a crystal ball to show me it. I mean there's been a lot awesome moments but there's been a lot of awful moments. Also, I should have started praying before you guys got up [in the morning] sooner. I think I started that when you were probably a teenager.
L: Really?!
C: No, I was probably too sleep deprived before then anyway.
L: *chuckle* you probably needed more sleep than you needed prayer time. Maybe the two overlap when you're a new mom!
C: I think that's a huge element, that quiet time before the chaos and just doing the best you can and letting God do the rest. There's so much control, and you just have no idea when you get up what the heck is going to happen that day. I just think about the poor parents that get up in the morning and by the end of the day their child got hit by a car. You get up in the morning, and you just have no idea what could possibly happen in that time. There's no way you can be prepared for it: there's no way you can see many of those things coming until it happens and then you have to go back to the 10 things we just talked about. You don't have a manual about what to do right now! You know, you sit in the emergency room and they ask, “How did this happen?” and you're like, “I don’t know! I was taking a nap!”
*lots of laughing*
L: Yeah, “the kid was supposed to be doing his math, and now his arm is broken! I just do not see how a person could possibly break their arm doing math!”
*both laughing*
C: Well, and then you end up being judged! It’s just this circular thing! So yeah, it's good we don't always know what is going to happen.
L: For sure. I think moms are probably some of the most underappreciated leaders out there, so thank you for taking the time to do this interview with me and for all of the amazing information! I look forward to sharing with the readers on The Young Catholic Apostle!
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