I have several friends who are pregnant or who just had babies, so I wanted to write something to encourage them. This is partly because some asked for advice about specific issues, and partly because when you become a mom, tips and tricks from other moms can be so helpful as you start navigating a new relationship with a tiny human who can't communicate by talking and who is utterly dependent on you.
So, I started thinking about what kind of advice would be helpful. It soon became clear that this was difficult to determine, because sometimes, as a new parent, you just want someone to tell you what you should do. At the same time, there is nothing more annoying than people who freely tell you what to do when you haven't asked. There are so many exceptions to every pattern, and so many different types of parents and kids.
I started thinking about the best advice I'd ever been given as a parent, which turned out to be "Take care of yourself" more than anything about my kids. (Obviously, this applies to pursuing spiritual wholeness and caring for my physical needs AS WELL AS the needs of my children, not at the expense of my children. Phrased another way, my children should not be the center of my universe any more than I should be the center of my universe.)
And I remembered an interesting thing that happened a while ago. A friend asked, on Facebook, for advice regarding a specific issue with her newborn. The people who were most anxious to speak up and give her advice were parents like me: young and relatively inexperienced, with one or two or three small children. The older parents had little to no advice to offer. They simply offered encouragement and prayers for the new mom.
I began to realize that all the parenting posts I read are written by people who have just a few more years of experience than I do. Of course, this is partly generational, but I started wondering, where are the parenting blogs written by people whose kids are in their forties? (I'm actually asking this question, so if you know of any, feel free to let me know!) So many of the blogs that offer advice and solutions are written by people whose kids haven't grown up yet. And simple, long-term observation will show you that you can't judge by someone's child at two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, or even eighteen, what that child will be like as an adult. Observation will also show you that some responsible, kind people have irresponsible, terrible kids, and vice versa.
So I want to know, what advice comes from parents with grown children? It seems like the best people to offer parenting advice are those whose kids are already living their adult lives. It seems like those people would really have some insights on what to do or not to do, if parenting were a formula where you could put a certain parenting style in to get certain types of children out.
But older, wiser, experienced parents do not have many answers. They may give occasional advice, they offer encouragement, they offer community because they can relate. When you tell a mom whose kids are grown and gone about how fun and precious your children are, she can relate. She'll tell you how wonderful these years are and how quickly they go by, how you blink and suddenly your children have aged two, five, ten years. When you talk about how hard it is, how some days you wonder if you're actually going crazy or if you'll ever sleep again, and how sometimes being a mommy is the loneliest job in the world even though you're with people all day, the older mom knows. She sympathizes; she makes you feel like it's okay to be weak because she tells you that having small children is hard, and she reminds you that someday it will be over.
When you want to know what you should do, when you ask for advice, these older moms may offer practical suggestions, but at the same time they will say something along these lines: You just have to figure out what works for your family. Try different techniques. Every child is different. You're doing a good job. Trust your instincts about your child. Pray a lot, and remember that God is in control and He loves you. Or sometimes, older parents will say that they don't have any advice at all, but that they will pray for you. They do not offer solutions, in the way that we like to look for an X-step solution for every problem.
I came to the conclusion that being a good parent takes a lot of prayer and reflection, but there are very few one-size-fits-all solutions. My guess is that if you're the kind of person who is reading mommy blogs and worrying about whether or not you're doing a good job, you probably are doing a good job. The moms who are clearly NOT doing a good job, whose kids are candidates for state removal, are probably not reading the latest research about how to stimulate their kids' brains or wondering which type of discipline is most loving AND effective at curbing children's natural selfishness.
All that to say... I don't actually have any advice for new moms.
No, wait, that's not quite true (hope I don't look like a hypocrite now!). Here we go:
1) Take care of yourself as well as your kids.
2) Find other moms to talk to, ones in your stage who can rejoice and commiserate and offer tips and tricks because they're in the middle of it, and ones who are older and have the wisdom, peace, and perspective that come from life experience and time spent with Jesus.
That's all.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Life Update
Okay, it's been several months since I posted. I kept thinking to myself, "I need to blog," and not doing it, and feeling bad for not doing it. Finally I got to the point where I realized that I was actually too busy to blog and needed to not attempt to post anything again until July when I would be done teaching my summer course.
So, now we're in July, and here I am. Before I write about anything else, I thought a quick life update about the last few months was in order.
Since the last time I blogged in February, a variety of things took up most of my time:
1) Moving.
Moving was the big one. Let's just say that I never want to move again. This dream is not realistic, since we are renting now but would like to buy a home eventually, but even the thought of moving again makes me exhausted. There's something about packing up everything you own that makes you realize that you own way too much stuff. There's something about unpacking everything you own that tempts you to just throw away about half of it, except you think to yourself, "I really should give away or sell what I can... someone is bound to want a rocking chair or dresser or baby girls' clothes, and eventually I may need these anti-diahrreal pills or more than two shirts." So you can't just throw it all away. I know, First World Problems. "I just hate it when I have an abundance of everything I could ever want or need."
Compounding the annoyance of putting All The Stuff away is the fact that I have no organizational skills and a hard time making decisions. (I think these two weaknesses are part of a vicious cycle for me.) When I'm not sure where the best place to store something is, or what the best way to organize a variety of items is, I just don't do it at all. If I'm honest, I'm kind of hoping a solution will just appear in my mind (it has happened before), or that Ian will get tired of the mess before I do and handle it. But then I eventually feel trapped in chaos when there are no cleared horizontal spaces. This chaotic feeling makes it even harder for me to make decisions.
This need to spend a lot of time doing what I like least and am least talented at is part of why I didn't have time to blog.
2) Working.
Ian's job had him working almost sixty hours every week. It's crazy when your husband is gone before the kids get up (and our kids are EARLY risers) and comes home basically one hour before bath and bedtime. I have a whole new level of respect for single parents. I really don't know how they do it.
On top of this, I was also working, teaching two classes at the community college here. Originally, I had lined up a babysitter to watch the girls an extra two hours a week beyond their time with my parents, but that fell through toward the beginning of the semester, and since there wasn't that much to grade yet, I never got a replacement. Thus, instead of blogging during nap times or after bedtime, I was grading or answering e-mails. These things take up more time than you would think, especially when one class is online and so homework and emails are the only available communication you have with students.
3) Small Children Thrown Off Their Schedules.
With our move, Alexandra and Kaitlyn started sharing a bedroom. They're both pretty good about taking naps, but the first two weeks when we lived in our new place, they did not nap. I think the change in place was a big part of it, but it took me several days to figure out that they simply could not take naps in the same room. Alexandra likes to sing herself to sleep, which would keep Kaitlyn up; when Kaitlyn talks to herself, Alexandra comes out to complain about it. We've had many instances of the following conversation:
Me: "Alexandra, what are you doing out of bed?"
Alexandra: "Kaitlyn's talking and keeping me awake."
Kaitlyn from the bedroom: "Ma-ma! A-je-jan-ja!"
Alexandra: "See?"
Thankfully, we were able to borrow my parents' Pack N Play, so when the girls each had their own room for naps, nap time started happening again regularly.
Of course, I don't have to explain to anyone who's had small children how sacred nap time is. It's a break, a time to rest and recover, a time to not be one-hundred-percent at the disposal of somebody else. And not only does nap time give a parent a small time to recover, nap time also (at least in our household) makes the evening much more pleasant, because the small children are rested and happy instead of tired and cranky. So in the two weeks without nap time, surrounded by stuff that wasn't put away and on my own for twelve hours a day, I became very exhausted and discouraged. I needed to spend any free time I had resting and not blogging.
But now, stuff is put away, our house is (mostly) organized, the kids are taking naps again, and my spring and summer courses are over. Let the blogging recommence!
So, now we're in July, and here I am. Before I write about anything else, I thought a quick life update about the last few months was in order.
Since the last time I blogged in February, a variety of things took up most of my time:
1) Moving.
Moving was the big one. Let's just say that I never want to move again. This dream is not realistic, since we are renting now but would like to buy a home eventually, but even the thought of moving again makes me exhausted. There's something about packing up everything you own that makes you realize that you own way too much stuff. There's something about unpacking everything you own that tempts you to just throw away about half of it, except you think to yourself, "I really should give away or sell what I can... someone is bound to want a rocking chair or dresser or baby girls' clothes, and eventually I may need these anti-diahrreal pills or more than two shirts." So you can't just throw it all away. I know, First World Problems. "I just hate it when I have an abundance of everything I could ever want or need."
Compounding the annoyance of putting All The Stuff away is the fact that I have no organizational skills and a hard time making decisions. (I think these two weaknesses are part of a vicious cycle for me.) When I'm not sure where the best place to store something is, or what the best way to organize a variety of items is, I just don't do it at all. If I'm honest, I'm kind of hoping a solution will just appear in my mind (it has happened before), or that Ian will get tired of the mess before I do and handle it. But then I eventually feel trapped in chaos when there are no cleared horizontal spaces. This chaotic feeling makes it even harder for me to make decisions.
This need to spend a lot of time doing what I like least and am least talented at is part of why I didn't have time to blog.
2) Working.
Ian's job had him working almost sixty hours every week. It's crazy when your husband is gone before the kids get up (and our kids are EARLY risers) and comes home basically one hour before bath and bedtime. I have a whole new level of respect for single parents. I really don't know how they do it.
On top of this, I was also working, teaching two classes at the community college here. Originally, I had lined up a babysitter to watch the girls an extra two hours a week beyond their time with my parents, but that fell through toward the beginning of the semester, and since there wasn't that much to grade yet, I never got a replacement. Thus, instead of blogging during nap times or after bedtime, I was grading or answering e-mails. These things take up more time than you would think, especially when one class is online and so homework and emails are the only available communication you have with students.
3) Small Children Thrown Off Their Schedules.
With our move, Alexandra and Kaitlyn started sharing a bedroom. They're both pretty good about taking naps, but the first two weeks when we lived in our new place, they did not nap. I think the change in place was a big part of it, but it took me several days to figure out that they simply could not take naps in the same room. Alexandra likes to sing herself to sleep, which would keep Kaitlyn up; when Kaitlyn talks to herself, Alexandra comes out to complain about it. We've had many instances of the following conversation:
Me: "Alexandra, what are you doing out of bed?"
Alexandra: "Kaitlyn's talking and keeping me awake."
Kaitlyn from the bedroom: "Ma-ma! A-je-jan-ja!"
Alexandra: "See?"
Thankfully, we were able to borrow my parents' Pack N Play, so when the girls each had their own room for naps, nap time started happening again regularly.
Of course, I don't have to explain to anyone who's had small children how sacred nap time is. It's a break, a time to rest and recover, a time to not be one-hundred-percent at the disposal of somebody else. And not only does nap time give a parent a small time to recover, nap time also (at least in our household) makes the evening much more pleasant, because the small children are rested and happy instead of tired and cranky. So in the two weeks without nap time, surrounded by stuff that wasn't put away and on my own for twelve hours a day, I became very exhausted and discouraged. I needed to spend any free time I had resting and not blogging.
But now, stuff is put away, our house is (mostly) organized, the kids are taking naps again, and my spring and summer courses are over. Let the blogging recommence!
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