Why have children anyway?

Recently a friend asked me how I went on to want more children. The only answer I could give her was,” I just love them.” I’m sure she was thinking, wow! How profound. Can you sense my sarcasm? She was struggling with those first few months of parenting and needed some hope for the future. To my dismay, I didn’t have any hope for her. Parenting is hard. Sometimes it stinks. Literally depending on what the child has eaten. J I told her as much and she seemed relieved that I was so honest with her. Most well meaning veteran parents tell you how wonderful parenting is, likening it to some grand experience never known before. Most of those parents also say their children slept through the night at eight weeks. They lie. They must. After having three very different children, how is it that I didn’t get one who slept through the night until almost a year. Not one of them! I’m sure many of you are already lining up reasons why they didn’t and all the ways I went wrong so they would have slept better. So be it, but I tell myself that to feel better. After all, there are so many things I have goofed on, let me live in my fantasy that other parents simply lie to look good. Sleep is such a precious commodity to us that once a child actually does sleep we feel the need to let the world know exactly when they did it! Same with potty training, butt I digress.

I left my conversation with my friend feeling foolish, feeling like I let her down. After all, I have been in this game for six years and surely I could have come up with something better than, “ I just love them.” This has plagued me for awhile now, consuming more of my thoughts than I care to admit. Why did we want more children? Why two or three or even more crazy four!! There has to be a reason. Here’s some that I have heard. “Oh, it’s the way they look when they are sleeping at night. Like little angels.” Lame. Not only a bad reason, it’s a little self-centered to want more kiddos because they give you a warm fuzzy. Another I have come across is, “ When your child says,’ I love you momma’, your heart just melts!” Also lame, and also self-centered. We can’t just bring human beings into the world for self-centered reasons. I was struggling with the fact I had no idea why we had more children. I knew I enjoyed it, but there had to be a reason. I tend to over think things by the way.

Finally it hit me today as I was reading my Bible. In Psalm 127, God says that children are a reward from Him. He also says that we will be happy, or blessed with children. Really? Even though parenting is difficult, even though it’s not all that rewarding at times, God still says children are a reward? Okay, I’m listening. He says blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. Let’s give a shout out to the families who have sixteen kids! They must be really blessed! The conclusion I came to was, God says they are a blessing. As I thought back on my six whole years of parenting, I realized, He is right. Go figure, the Creator of the universe knows what is right. Raising my tribe has been challenging at times. In fact, when I think of it, it is often challenging. They have their own agenda, which doesn’t fit with mine very often. I am also reminded that in that way, I am very much like my children. God often has something for me, and yet I tend to say, “No, my way God!” Could it be that having children is a reflection of our relationship to Him? I am fully convinced it is. In His grace and mercy though, He showers me with blessings through my child rearing days, even when I have failed Him and the kids miserably. This also happens all too often.

So why have more? Well, I suppose it’s because God says they are a gift from Him. That may sound self-centered also, but when the Creator of the world offers you a gift, would you turn it down because you might get too much out of it? You’d be a fool. Perhaps in another bit of writing I will ramble on and on about the blessings God has given me through my children. There are so many it would take me a lifetime. Answering prayers that otherwise would seem simple or unimportant; carrying me through one of the most difficult loses ever. Or just giving me the strength to honor Him another day by what I say and do to my children. This is why I have continued my journey of adding to the Weir, TX population.

My sad story

Here’s my sad story. I have really been trying to make an effort in my playing with the children. You know, being a mom who’s ‘there.’ I was playing with the boys nicely; building and smashing our blocks, ramming cars, the whole thing. I thought I should think of something to do with Eden. It’s a little harder with her because she’s kind of a girl who comes up with games that really don’t make sense. To her they do, but to anyone outside her mind, it’s a mystery. I asked her to pay hairstylist with me and we could do some fun little braids or ponytails. She really didn’t want to and gave me a couple of excuses. She basically was blowing me off for her friend that was over. By the way, this friend has been with us all summer. We watch her everyday, so it’s not like it was a special play date. A few minutes later I heard the friend ask if Eden wanted to play hairstylist, and to my surprise my sweet peach said “Of course!” Crushed I was, rejected by my own child. You see, I go about my day balancing the housework and playtime only to think I come up short on the latter one. So you can imagine the heartbreak when I am actually making a huge effort, only to be dumped.

Well, the boys went on to a new game and I had lunches to make. As I sat with the baby while he ate his lunch, I was feeling like a lump. I was just sitting there. Canon has no use for me while he’s eating. He’s a do-it-yourself kind of kid. I am there to make sure he doesn’t choke. I didn’t want to read because I am funny about having books around food. Grease, crumbs, and who knows what might jump onto the pages. I thought, Scrabble! I love Scrabble! My mother in law plays by herself all the time on the computer. As I was setting up the game it occurred to me the she plays against the computer, not really by herself. At least there is a challenge in that. Oh well, I still played. I was feeling pretty good about my words. After all, you can come up with some good ones if you’re the only one making the words. A while later the kids meandered down and asked what on earth I was doing. As I started to feel silly, I thought, no, I am showing them that I too know how to play by myself and by the way it’s fun! Once they saw that it was fun, they asked if they could play. I have to admit, I was reluctant to let them. I was having fun. Of course we could play together. Silly me! Well, after lunch everyone lost interest and thought it was more fun to throw fake food over the banister. Actually, I’d have to agree with them. A fake food fight is a hoot. In any case, lesson learned here… same one I learned in Kindergarten, if they don’t want to play with you, move on and find someone who does. It may just be you, and that’s okay.

Tough days

Parenting is tough. I know, duh!! It really proves to be much harder as the years go by. Maybe it’s because I have more children with each passing year. Let’s hope that’s not always the case. At some point I’d like to stay at the same number of kids for awhile. Some days are tougher than others, some easier. As new challenges arise, I find myself feeling completely unqualified to parent my troops.

Recently my son let me know that sometimes I make him mad. My first response was to be defensive and try to justify the things I do. Instead I said, “What do I do that makes you mad?” In my mind I was thinking of all the things it could possibly be; I don’t play with him enough, I shout, I ask him to do too many chores, I won’t let him have unlimited sweets. The list was endless in my mind. I was sure he was about to come up with my greatest short coming. He said,”When we play blocks, you turn them over the wrong way and after all roads have a line down the middle.” You might be thinking he was babbling about something that didn’t make sense. Let me explain. We have the oversized cardboard blocks and on one side there is a line from where you fold them together to make the block. When we build, he likes to make roads and it frustrates him when the blocks aren’t facing the same way, or the “right” way. Huh. That’s it?!?! I was coming up with criminal offenses and all he could come up with was that I turn the blocks the wrong way.

It was at that moment that I realized I beat myself up way too much. I know that may not be a news flash to most people. As a self described type A personality, perfectionist I rarely see the good in what I do. I am getting better, lest I end up in a mental institution or worse, my husband and children end up there first. When it comes to raising kids I really scrutinize every aspect of what I do, from what we have for dinner to how neat I keep their rooms. With every baby I have had to let some things slide a bit. When we first had Zion I had well meaning friends that said we had to lower our standards of how the house should look. I think that’s just something lazy people say to make themselves feel better. Who knows? I still have the same standards, I just can’t meet them. My base boards haven’t seen the light of day in two years due to dust on them. My blinds are only clean on the top, not the underneath. As I write this there is laundry in the dryer, getting wrinkled. When I do get all my cleaning done, I finish and honestly expect a roar of applause for my hard work and efforts, sort of an Academy Award moment. That never happens. I will even call my husband and let him know if I have cleaned so he can comment on it when he gets home. Poor guy.

As for my son and his gripe toward me, I assume he just hasn’t figured out yet that I may be lousy at parenting. Maybe his barometer is based on how well I build blocks. Maybe my daughter’s is on how well I can braid her ponies’ hair. Maybe my tiny guy measures it on how many books I read to him. Maybe I should take a moment and see what is important to them and see that I actually am doing a good job. Whatever they measure my parenting success by, it doesn’t matter. My measure of success is at the end of my life when I want to hear those two words, “Well done! “ Each day, as my challenges arise, I seek the One who is the perfect Parent and who knows my children better than anyone, and I know He is pleased. That should be enough for me.

I’m bored!!

“What is there to do? We’re bored!” Sound familiar? Well, in our home these
are foreign words. They are words that are not allowed to be uttered in
front of an adult for fear it might come back to them in the form of some
dreaded weed pulling or other house work. Well, these were words I have
heard a little too often this summer from friends who have frequented our
house. On one such occasion, one of the little treasures proceeded to tell
me she NEEEEEEDED a Nintendo DS because she gets so bored at home. Needed?
She explained that there’s nothing to do at home and after all a person
could only watch so much tv. Seriously? She’s 6! How is it possible that
the world is so dull to her already that she needs constant stimulation? How
did these children become so jaded at such a young age? When I was a kid,
especially at my grandma’s house, you never said you were bored or asked to
watch tv. You would wind up with a rag in one hand and Pledge in the other.
Oh and by the way, you didn’t get paid for it. Can you imagine the child
abuse that went on?? How cruel and cold the world was for my generation.
As I thought about this interaction of needs and desires of 6 year olds, I
was reminded of a batch e-mail that went out awhile back. It said something
to the effect that those of us in my generation, born before 1980, were some
of the most creative, inventive, and adventurous people the planet has
known. Now, I realize that sounds a bit arrogant, but hear me out. As a
whole, my generation tended to take risks. Remember sitting in the back of
pick up trucks, all the way to San Francisco? That one was for my mom.
Remember no seat belts? Remember doing cherry drop flips off the monkey bars
over concrete? I imagine there were a few head injuries, but we weren’t so
fearful. I grew up in So. Cal, and we would spend hours at the beach. This
is were I learned to swim. We would go and play in the water, my mom may
have been in the water or not. As I got older I am sure she hung out on the
beach a little and swam a little, meaning there were times when I could go
in the water by myself. My friends and I would go in, body surf and get out
only to find ourselves four or five life-guard stations away from where we
started. Can anyone relate? As I write this, I cringe to think about my
little ones swimming alone at the beach, mostly because of all the trash
and needles they may encounter. I want them to be risk takers. I want them
to have a lust for life and all that this life has to offer. As it is now
one of my children is cautious to a fault. Maybe he will just be a
conservative little adult. One of my other children on the other hand is a
certified risk taker. She’s frightening really. And, as always, the
verdict is still out on tiny.

I realize I want my children to take risks, and to enjoy this life that God
has given them. As I pray daily for our children, one of my prayers is they
would use the wisdom God has given them in order to discern whether a risk
is worth it. I sit here and try to imagine what that might be. Sky diving?
Base jumping? Leaving everything and becoming a missionary in the deepest
darkest places of the world? Who knows. I pray they would not be conformed
to the patterns of the world around them, playing mind numbing games for
hours, or watching mindless tv for longer than that. Or worse yet, sitting
around saying “I’m bored!” Being bored should be illegal. I can just
imagine getting a ticket for uttering those dreadful words. Eventually, the
penalty may be one couldn’t buy video games, or movies, or pool toys again
because they have allowed themselves to have a lack of imagination. Yes you
heard me, I believe pool toys create a lack of imagination. I have only
heard one time kids playing Marco Polo. Maybe it’s unsafe. You know having
your eyes closed and wandering around a pool. Who knows. In any case, the
food for thought may be, are we raising namby pamby boring people who never
think outside the box, therefore making this the safest yet dullest time the
world has ever known? As a self proclaimed adventure girl, I shudder to
think of such a tragedy!