raising children

I’m going to miss this someday.

Every time we moms are out in public with our littles we hear it from older parents.

“They grow up SO fast.” “Cherish this time.” “They won’t stay little forever.”

Beneath a strained smile, we brush off the comment as patronizing. We roll our eyes to ourselves, convinced that this phase will never end. The sleep deprivation, the babes weighing down our arms, the constant messes, the power struggles, the depleted sense of “self”.

To be sure, the baby/toddler/preschooler phase can wear down the best of us.

But you know what?

The old ladies are right. One day I was stuffing four little bodies into a Costco cart and the next I was sending the youngest of them off to kindergarten.

One day I counted down the hours until my husband came home from work and the next I was so busy shuttling my school-age children around that I was surprised at how early he walked in the door.

One day I was battling the two-year-old tantrums and the next I was helping one of my daughters grapple with teenage depression.

One day I was arranging play dates left and right and the next I was hosting 10-12 girls for a Halloween party that my daughter had planned and prepared entirely by herself.

One day I was whipping up macaroni and cheese for the kids on a regular basis and the next day they were whipping it up so that Tim and I could go out for dinner.

One day they went from this:

To this:

Overnight.

I’d like to think I followed the advice of more experienced moms and enjoyed those earlier days. I did my best to not shrug off the comments at the grocery store about how short this time is. I gave it my best shot.

It didn’t make the time slow down any. Lucky for me, though, I get another chance at this stage of life. Four years ago when I found out I had a viable pregnancy almost seven years after the last one, I pretty much laughed out loud. Pushing the reset button at the ripe old age of 38 was never part of the plan.

Fortunately, for me, a mother of advanced age, I had the perspective I didn’t have the first time around (try though I did to cultivate it). “They grow up SO fast.” “Cherish this time.” “They won’t stay little forever.”

Consequently, raising little Jack has been an absolute joy. Sure, I am older, and even more exhausted than the first time around. But I’m wiser, too. Wise enough to know that I’m going to miss this someday.

We would all do well to remind ourselves of that fact, in every stage of life. “I’m going to miss this someday”.

I may not love that I have to accompany my teenage daughter every single time she gets behind the wheel of a car until she gets her license. But I can have the foresight that when she does, I’m going to miss the hours we got to spend one-on-one in the car during those critical teenage years.

Planning birthday parties for my ten-year-old may tax my creativity (and wallet) but I may miss the day that she valued my input on her activities.

I may be exasperated that every waking hour encompasses meeting the needs of each of my five children but I will likely long for that sense of purpose behind my life and activities when those kiddos are up and out.

It’s good to look to the future with hope and anticipation. It’s also beneficial to recognize the possibility that our current circumstances are equally worthy of enjoyment. That in hindsight, we might actually miss the moments we are living right now.

But the question is, how?

  1. Remember when you were almost due with your first child and all the older moms told you to “sleep when the baby sleeps”? I do. You know what’s great about sleeping when the baby sleeps (within reason, because, as we all know, it isn’t realistic to sleep 15 plus hours a day)? You can give your best, well-rested self to your child during their waking hours. And you’ll enjoy each moment a lot more when you’re not constantly nodding off during play time. Try napping when your kid does. It might surprise you how much your life and energy improve.
  2. When my babes were little, a more experienced mom told me that at the end of every night, she would sneak into her kids’ bedrooms and watch them sleep for a moment. Let’s face it, kids are adorable when they sleep. The sight of their angelic little faces reawakens that sense of love and gratitude for the opportunity to be their mother, despite the challenges of the day. Try it out.
  3. Write it down. I started a blog when my oldest was four years old (I had three kids at the time). Had I not, I would never remember that she had asked me to rename her “Cinderella”. Or that her younger sister had swallowed a penny. I certainly wouldn’t remember that all of my children managed to climb out on the roof one night. Scratch that. You don’t forget stuff like that. Point is, reading about those early parenting days is a whole lot more enjoyable than living them. So keep a record.

“They grow up SO fast.” The old ladies are right. So let’s quit rolling our eyes and enjoy those little ones.

Motherhood IS what I want. Why is that so hard to understand?

A couple of weeks ago, I sat down during Jack’s naptime to write up a schedule for a friend of ours who would be taking care of our five children while Tim and I took an international trip.  I did my best to include only the essentials, nixing a few lessons and practices to make the schedule more bearable for her.  It took me almost four hours.

The spreadsheet included what needed to happen and when, who would be taking whom and where, what needed to be prepared ahead of time, which of these events she would need to attend, and when/what to have each person eat so no one would get hangry.  Seriously, it was quite the process.

And that didn’t even include basic instructions for caring for Jack, essential rules to keep order in our home and other suggestions for ensuring a smooth six days!  (I typed those up the next day-it took another 2 1/2 hours).

Rarely do we as moms (and dads, for that matter) sit down and quantify all the minutia required in running a household and caring for our families.  We settle into a groove, waking up at insane hours to care for children, clean house, meet schedule demands, and fill stomachs.

We rarely keep a tally of the daily sacrifices we make for these humans we love so deeply. Sometimes not quantifying these mundane tasks can create a sense that what we do day in and day out doesn’t count for much.

Oh, but it does.

I was raised to believe that motherhood was next to godliness.  I learned it in church, I watched it modeled by my mother, and I saw my father’s appreciation for what she did on the homefront while he put bread on the table.   I felt the love that one can only feel when a mother prioritizes her children over worldly pursuits.

My mom is truly one of the best.

I pursued an education, understanding that I could perform well in any career I chose.  My intellect, among other talents (in music and languages) was strong.  It would have been easy for me to rationalize that a career would satisfy me better or that my talents would be wasted if I stayed at home to raise my children.

I held firm in my motherly aspirations.  My goal was to pursue a field that I enjoyed, get a degree (or two or three) and be flexible if/when marriage and children came along.  Fortunately for me, both of them did.

Though my plans for law school were sidelined, my performing opportunities stymied and my earning potential decreased, there is no doubt in my mind that I am doing exactly what I was born to do.  And I have zero regrets.

Why?  Because I have an unshakeable knowledge that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that the modern feminist movement has steered women away from our homes by teaching us that home life is mundane and “beneath” us.  This misguided philosophy has contributed to what I see as a crumbling society.  Truly.

Think about it.  When our children spend more time learning at the feet of their peers than their parents, what are the outcomes?  When our children see that our careers take up more of our days than time spent with them, what messages do we send about their worth and value?  When family dinners consist of grabbing take out and shoveling it in on the drive home, what benefits do our kids miss out on?

I’m not trying to make people feel bad, particularly those who need to work.  We all have to make choices based on our circumstances and limitations.

But I am trying to empower women who choose family over career.  Absent the accolades and financial benefits that working mothers attain, mothers who do not work outside the home need reassurance that their work is enough.  Valued.  Essential.  Indeed, next to godliness.

I am abundantly blessed to have a husband who provides adequately for our family and supports me staying home 100%.  That is a gift I do not take lightly.

But we cannot underestimate the damage that society faces when we decide that women should do anything and be anything they want.  And that wanting to be a mother doesn’t count.  It’s too…beneath us.  It lacks aspiration.

There are costs to this dangerous philosophy.

One of my daughters engaged in a discussion with some peers at school a few weeks ago.  Her teacher overheard her saying something to the effect of: “If I don’t get married, I’ll probably do something in the medical field.  If I DO get married, I’d like to pursue photography so I can stay home with my kids.”

Her teacher, overhearing this portion of the conversation, could not pass up the opportunity to set the record straight.

“Lily, you can do whatever you want.  You don’t need to adjust your dreams based on whether you start a family or not.”

You know what?  She’s absolutely right. Lily can do whatever she wants.  But since when is doing whatever one wants best for society at large (or even for oneself, for that matter)?  Why can’t we, like Lily, be a little less selfish in our approach to family life and careers?

Is it so unfathomable that what my daughter wants most is to be a mother?  And why is that aspiration greeted with the suggestion that she’s being complacent?

Stick to your guns, Lily.  What so many people think they want out of life turns out to be fleeting.  What you want?  Motherhood?  The impact spans eternity.

The one question I ask my kids after each altercation.

Tonight, I ducked out of the kitchen shortly after dinner to play the piano.  Why?  Well, because I wanted to, first of all.  But second, and this is what I told the kids, so that they wouldn’t retreat to the piano instead of doing their assigned post-dinner chores.

Never mind that I should have been modeling appropriate post-dinner behavior.  But I had made the dinner, after all.  They could clean it up.  It’s actually been the arrangement in our home for at least six years.  But somehow I typically spend all my energy after dinner corralling them into doing what should be habit by now.  Clearing the table, washing the dishes, loading the dishwasher, sweeping the floor and wiping the counters and table.  They make it look like rocket science most days.

So tonight I washed my hands of it, brushed Anna off the piano bench to prevent her from being distracted and played a few tunes myself.  Within minutes, a blow-up of epic proportions ensued.  Having hidden myself away in another room, I was unaware of the origins of this particular argument.  All I knew was that after a yelling match between Tim and Eve, Tim retreated upstairs to bathe Jack (which was apparently necessary due to the nature of the crime Eve had committed involving homemade slime).  The rest of the crew, unable to resolve the situation peaceably, continued the shouting match, leaving me no choice but to intervene.

I run a pretty tight ship.  But unless my kids are physically hurting each other, I really try to steer clear of their contentious interactions.  I don’t want the expectation of resolving all of their differences, nor do I think that facilitates good relationships.  Occasionally, when they get particularly riled up and the interaction degenerates into nuclear warfare, I send them to what we call “Lover’s Landing” (the landing between the two sets of stairs in our house) where I ask them to consider the question:

What could you have done better in this situation?

I don’t point fingers, there’s no blame game to speak of.  I simply ask them to acknowledge their role in how everything went downhill.

Much of the time they retort defensively, saying, “What about her?”  Or, “if she hadn’t done such and such, I wouldn’t have had to do this or that”.  It’s a basic human mechanism, to stew about how we are victims of circumstances, how someone else’s behavior was not only the catalyst but the cause of our own behavior.

It might be nature to do so, but it’s a mechanism founded in a fundamental falsehood.  A falsehood that fuels our rationalization of poor behavior.  And, if we’re really thinking big, the destruction of relationships, and even societies.  We are responsible for our actions and ours alone.  It’s actually quite liberating to believe so, despite how easy it is to blame others.

We have zero control over what others choose.  And we have complete control over what we choose.  At least that’s the goal.

So when I ask my children to consider “What could you have done better in this situation?” they have to dig deep, take a good hard look at themselves and decide where things started to go south and how their actions might have contributed to it.  It’s easier sometimes than others.  It requires humility but is incredibly empowering.

Tonight when I asked one of the two parties (the less “guilty” of the two, in my assessment of the situation) to evaluate what she could have done better, she responded, “Why are you mad at me?  I didn’t do anything.”  Typical.

I repeated myself.  “I’m sure that if you think really hard about it, you can find something you did (or didn’t do) that would have improved the outcome.  When you figure that out, commit yourself to doing it differently next time.”

Because we all know that (in families) there will always be a next time.

Both the girls involved were able to settle down, consider their role and resolve the situation successfully.  And tonight I got a glimpse that my efforts to raise peacemakers are making headway.  While one daughter flew off the handle, two other daughters helped to subdue her.  One gently washed her hair of the slime (that was the real culprit in the whole mess), the other cleaned it off the floor (and the walls and the ceiling).  Without a word of complaint.

That it ended up in those places was not really their fault.  But their resolution to “make the situation better” trumped their tendency to deny their roles in the argument.  It warmed this mother’s heart.