Saturday, May 5, 2012

Motherhood: A Competition?

This week I've been listening to a really humbling and thought provoking series on Family Life Today about the pressure mothers are under to stay home, to work outside the home, to make sure their children are successful and occupied all of the time with stimulating activities...and the list goes on. 

{I often listen to these free broadcasts while I do dishes, as they address real issues I struggle with as a wife and mother.  The guests on the show question cultural norms and focus on intentional living.  I find that I come away with great thoughts and ideas for parenting and marriage from these maybe 30 minute segments.  They make me think, and they feed my soul.)

Go and listen;  Dr. Meg Meeker (a pediatrician and mother of four) shines light on what our job as mothers entails, and what it does not.  She talks about all the things that "good mothers" don't need to do. 

We don't need to solve our children's problems, or make sure they are always happy, or prevent them from being bored.  In fact, she recommends allowing them to BE BORED (!!) and figure out how to fill their time on their own - a really important life skill.

What resonated with me was the importance of spending time together as a family, and the need to protect that time together.  Make rules about it and place it of higher importance than filling schedules with extra curriculars - no matter how wonderful they are.  She spoke about not defining ourselves by our children's successes and failures, or our friends' children's successes. 

Motherhood is competitive.  Am I being the most patient, the most loving mom?  Am I providing my kids with enough opportunities - or at least as many as these other moms I know?  Am I cooking the most healthy meals from scratch?  Am I doing enough?  I definitely fall into this trap.  And I can be prideful of my mothering sometimes.  

Stop doing and just be with them.  I can't do everything, especially with (three) small children at home.  Something that many others have tried to tell me, yet I continue to struggle with.  "Stop doing so many things, and spend more time at home playing with your children," is the message I heard. 

I really am trying to do that.  I know they need me.  I know that the time when they actually want to be with me is not going to last forever.  Though, some days it feels like they are going to need so much of me forever.  But when I'm thinking clearly, and I'm not at the end of a vary long day and night (often alone) with three children under five years old, I realize I have this small window of time where I get to be a huge influence in their lives.  And we can form a really special relationship if I choose to put other things aside and just be with them. 

As all mothers know this is much easier to say than to put into practice when meal time is looming, and dishes are screaming to be cleaned, and hampers are overflowing with dirty laundry, and the entry way is a minefield of coats and shoes and Sunday school projects and preschool crafts and....

It's scary, and often lonely, to just be with your kids when you don't see other moms doing this.  Will I screw my kids up by not giving them more lessons, opportunities, experiences?  I have wondered this.  Is staying home and scrimping by the right thing?  Should I go back to work full time so we can afford a bigger house, private school tuition and more activities for the kids?  {NO!  I've prayed for the opportunity to be home full-time for years.  What a blessing it is!  I do not want to spend this time hurrying from activity to activity.}  But it's my nature to compare them to their peers.  How will they measure up? 

She said that kids don't care whether you make brownies from a box or brownies from scratch; what they care about is sitting down and enjoying the brownie with you!  Okay.  But I care (A LOT) that the brownie is from scratch and doesn't have wheat or dairy....

What I heard, and I continually need to be reminded of, is that I need to really assess what I want for our family, and what God has called us to.  I need to look at our schedule and decide what commitments are really important for our family and what are not.  It is not easy to prioritize.  It's not easy to be the only mom who doesn't have their child signed up for gymnastics (or swimming or VBS or whatever it is).  It may mean pulling my children out of their Bible study class (gasp!).But the time we have with our children is precious.  And we are teaching them values, intentionally or not, by how we choose to spend our time.  I want my children to know that that they are loved, that they are special, that they are important - not because of what they do or how well they do it, but because of who they are.

So I'm going to jump off that train and do my best not to compare what my children are doing to what everyone else's children are doing.  I am going to spend more time at home with them.  And when I'm at home I'm going to really be with them.  Play with them.  Laugh with them.  Wrestle with them.  Tickle and kiss them.  I am going to make sure that not a day goes by that we don't share one of those moments where we smile and look at each other with that glimmer in the eye that says, "I love you.  And I love this time of being with you."

Do you need to jump off the train?

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