Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a successful parent. Sure, I don’t have any kids myself, but as I watch all of the parents around me, both successful and defeated, I’ve realized that it isn’t your children’s success that defines yours as a parent. A child can grow up to be a successful lawyer, but does that make his mom a successful parent? Not necessarily. It goes the other way as well: A child can grow up to be a manipulative, lying thief or even as bad as a serial killer and to me that doesn’t mean that his or her parents weren’t successful at parenting. Here is why I think that:

Success is a mindset that you have, not how many things you have accomplished. In other words, you can have accomplished nothing in your life, but as long as you’re happy with where you, as a person, have ended up, then you are successful. You don’t have to have a career, and you don’t have to have a college degree. You can have as many or as little accomplishments as you’d like. As long as you’re happy where you’re at in life, you’re successful in my book.

As I get older and begin to think about what kind of mom I will be, I look to the women in my family for guidance. In my family alone there are many different kinds of parenting styles. The women in my family are so strong and, although their styles of parenting are so different, I consider them all to be so successful and wish to be exactly like all of them.

I don’t know if there is any way to express how much this topic means to me or how much I think parents all over the world need to hear this. Having a troubled child DOES NOT make you a failure. It makes you a success for being strong enough to take on the challenge. And if the challenge is too much for you, that doesn’t make you a failure either. You can’t always expect to win.

Just remember parents: no matter what you face as a parent, you are always successful to so many people who look up to you.