RaggedyMom showed me this CNN story about developing children’s social maturity. In a fourteen-year study, the preschool children of mothers who described a picture using emotional language showed more empathy and better social skills when they got older.
Read more on Empathy, Mother-Guilt, Shabbat, Career Skills, Anger, and Idleness…
The Over-Parenting Crisis by Katie Allison Granju, author of an influential book on attachment parenting, complains about parents who obsess about every aspect of their children’s development.
This over-parenting has become an epidemic. Legions of well-intentioned mothers and fathers, urged on by popular media and the marketplace, are frantically striving to create an endlessly controlled, bubble-wrapped childrearing environment. From neuroses with regulating our babies’ sleep habits, to insistence on antimicrobial everything, to the attempt to continue “babyproofing” our homes until our babies are well into elementary school, our current parenting zeitgeist is competitive, market-driven . . . and exhausting.
Then Commenter Abbi pointed me to a New York Times blog post about a couple who work different shifts to reduce daycare costs, as I suggested in my post on frugal strategies for young families. During his lunch hour, the husband drives his wife to work at Costco and their 3-year-old and 19-month-old to their daycare for a few hours. Their day ends like this:
Today is Taanit Bechorot, the fast of the first-born, which commemorates the fact that Jews in Egypt were spared the tenth plague. Because this year the fast would have fallen out on Shabbat, it got moved up to Thursday. At any rate, no one really fasts. Instead, bechorot (first-born sons) attend a siyum exempting them. Just about every synagogue has one after shacharit (morning prayers).
What do you do if you are the parent of a bechor who is too young to fast? The father usually attends a siyum in his place. But I know of a woman who actually fasted on Taanit Bechorot; her husband was also a bechor, so she felt that the obligation fell on her. I don’t know why she didn’t just go to a siyum if she felt it was necessary. My husband is a bechor and I never fasted when my oldest was a baby. (And I didn’t go to a siyum either.) I know there’s not usually much to eat on the day before Pesach, but still.
As my husband was coming out of shul this morning a young woman drove up; she told him she had heard that it was possible to get “yayn bechorim” (wine of the first-born) at that synagogue. The woman explained that she was planning to drink it on Pesach, in lieu of fasting today. My husband had never heard of it. Have you?
Please welcome my 13yo daughter’s first ever guest post. She took the pictures too.
My little brother’s tooth finally fell out today. I made him a box to put it in, which was supposed to be an envelope, except I forgot how to make them. I still remember some of my teeth that fell out. I was told, as all children, that if I put the tooth under my pillow, I would get a present from the Tooth Fairy. It worked the first time. The second time, however, something went wrong. I wouldn’t go to bed without an envelope for my tooth, insisting the Tooth Fairy wouldn’t come if the tooth had no envelope. In the end, my mother convinced me it didn’t care and I went to sleep very worried. In the morning it turned out I was right: the tooth was still there, and there was no present! I wasn’t very happy.
A couple of years later, I tested my parents. I lost a tooth and hid it under my pillow, without telling anyone. I had outgrown the envelope by then. The Tooth Fairy didn’t come. After a week, I told my parents. My mother told me that there was no Tooth Fairy, but my father insisted that it still existed. The next morning, of course, the Tooth Fairy came. But it was too late. I didn’t believe in them anymore.
Now you know who are the cynical ones in the family.
I once heard a taped lecture where the speaker imagined an event in the fictional homemaking “olympics,” where a mother takes her two small children to the park. They must reach their goal without the tricycle and bicycle getting run over or full of dog doody. The speaker called it the olympics to emphasize the many intricate skills that mothers and homemakers must master.
What if there were a Jewish homemaking olympics? Readers who objected to the term superwoman might also feel intimidated by “olympics;” I don’t mean to focus on the competitive aspect. I want homemakers and their partners to appreciate the tremendous range of skills they develop to keep the house running smoothly. Or to keep it running at all.
An entire group of events would involve Pesach.
Here are some other possibilities for “Jewish Homemaking Olympics” categories:
Are you a superwoman? The Orthodox Jewish superwoman has multiple children yet still manages to (pick several): always look great, sew the family’s clothes, take on major community projects, have a spotless house, host frequent guests, work full-time or run a home business, live in a tiny apartment, have a husband who is never home, blog (just kidding), care for elderly parents or special-needs children . . . well you get the idea.
A lot has been written about whether these women are as successful as they seem. Maybe they have lots of help, or their marriage and/or children are seriously neglected.
I’d like to focus on the truly successful ones, whoever they are (keeping in mind that success is changeable and subjective and that every woman has different resources and skills).
Emuna Rosenfelder, a member of an email group I frequent, wrote that she has noticed several qualities common to many “superwomen.”
Here is Emuna’s list. I added my comments in blue, and how having or not having that trait affects me, mother of six, at this point in my life.
A mother I know described a challenging situation involving one of her children. Without relating to the specific issues, I decided to post some general suggestions for surviving tough times.
Recently, while I was out with a group of women friends, “G” got a call on her cell phone. She told the caller that she was on her way. It turns out that her grandson needed a change, and her daughter had gone to a concert with friends. Her son-in-law doesn’t change diapers. When one of the other women (“M”) commented, G said, “What do you want, that my daughter shouldn’t go out?” M replied that this was between the couple and she should leave it to them.
The most interesting part of the story is that this young couple has not only a baby, but older twins as well. How the father managed to survive newborn twins with his marriage intact while never changing a diaper, I can only imagine.
Would you accept a free trip to Bora Bora? What if your husband’s company was paying all your expenses for a ten-day trip to a luxury resort in the South Pacific? And what if you were nursing your six-month-old baby, but the resort didn’t allow children? What if your husband had to go, and should you decide you can’t leave the baby you will be stuck at home with all your small children?
Let’s say you are the only religious Jews scheduled to attend and the kosher food is coming from Israel, so you will be eating out of a box while the other guests are feasting. And say you don’t enjoy drinking yourself into oblivion, hanging out at the beach, or watching erotic dancing. Would you still want to go?
Your husband can’t really help with this decision. “Honey, I think that the baby needs you and it would be best for you to stay home.” Ha. He has to say that he very much wants you to come. Which is almost certainly true.
My husband said that were he faced with this situation, he would tell the company he can’t go. Smart man.
Update: Thanks for all the comments. For the record, no one offered my family such a vacation. My youngest is three years old (but she is still nursing). Apparently I was wrong about the food; there are Israeli caterers who package food that can compete with a resort.
Part 1: When does chinuch begin?
There is a direct connection between the type of parenting and child spacing. When the baby stays with his mother day and night, nurses on cue without bottles and pacifiers, starts solids gradually and appropriately, and spends a good deal of his time either nursing or in close physical contact with his mother, the mother’s natural postpartum infertility generally lasts for a year or two. (Six to twelve months is fairly common.) When you hear of mothers who exclusively breastfed and still had a return to fertility or a pregnancy at three months postpartum, it’s often (but not always) related to scheduled nursings, mother-baby separation, or a baby who is encouraged to sleep through the night. Because most young couples and health-care professionals lack knowledge regarding breastfeeding and fertility, the parents can’t make informed decisions. When I counsel haredi mothers they are desperate for such information. This information should be readily available to everyone, but it is especially sad when it is lacking in a community that discourages use of artificial birth control.
Here are some ways I have seen families cope with closely spaced children:
Read more on Close spacing Part 2. Fertility and Parenting styles…
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