My kids are driving me crazy. Full moon? Contaminated water fountains at school? Hormones running amuck? What?
Mom, where’s my snack?
Mom, how do you spell Crowfoot?
Mom, have you seen that hairband, you know, the one I really like?
Mom….. Mom…. Mom….
I am thinking of changing my name. I might change it to Dad!
I know - that’s not fair. But truly, when both of us are home, it is still “Mom, where is the blah, blah, blah”, “Mom, can you do blah, blah, blah”, and “Mom, I need help with blah, blah, blah”. I suspect that even when I am not here the kids still call out for Mom, but I have no proof of that.
When the kids hear the garage door opening, a clear signal that Dad is about to walk in, they all hide. (It is the only moment of peace I have!) And then one by one, they jump out trying to scare the life out of him. Once that is over, they all laugh and throw themselves at my husband to welcome him home. That is where it ends.
It is as if my husband comes in, greets the kids, changes out of his work clothes, and then dons Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak! It is remarkable. Sometimes I even say things like, Don’t you see your dad sitting right beside you? They just look beside them, shrug their shoulders and carry on with their incessant demands of me. Or, I am more direct, and I say, Go and ask your dad! They simply look at me and raise their arms and shoulders, in the universal Huh? gesture. I can’t stand it.
My kids are no longer young. In the realm of a kid’s life, they are middle aged. They could be doing more for themselves – and truly, more for me! In many developing countries, families are large. There are three reasons that I know of: high mortality rates, to help with the work of the family and to increase the likelihood that parents will be cared for in their old age. We are not the beneficiaries of a large family – in those same ways. There are days when I wonder if I am going to make it through their childhood – intact.
The problem is, I feel somewhat responsible. When I became a full time mother, it became my full time job. I began parenting with the naïve belief that what I do makes a significant difference in the lives of my kids. Moreover, I quickly established the bad habit of doing more for my kids than what they really needed. There are, however, mitigating circumstances that have shaped my motherly role. For instance, when Lauren arrived, she couldn’t do anything for herself, she kind of unwittingly relied upon me – and I complied. And further, when Yohannes joined our family, he did too much for himself (and us) – that was hardly an acceptable trait in a two year old! And Faven, arriving in the family at age ten - well, she is a mix of competence and incompetence; she needs us and she doesn’t need us all in the same moment. Moreover, her personal needs had quite possibly been ignored for years –doesn’t she need someone to answer to her neediness?
Quite recently, through attending parenting seminars, I learned that when kids say help me it is our job is to help them ‘just enough’. It turns out that helping my kids is way harder (and more time consuming) than simply doing it for them. But then, they don’t end up being able to stand on their own two feet, and they are constantly standing on top of mine. Even when they have the skills, they lack the confidence (at least in my presence).
Maybe crazy is simply part of motherhood. For even a day without the constant clatter of family demands, makes me stop and think about all the reasons that I love these mid-sized people who drive me crazy! I may not be keeping up in the race, but at least I have the capacity to limp along, pull over when I am beat, and ask for directions when I have taken a wrong turn.
This is Yohannes, at age 2-3(in 2006) happily washing the dishes.
