Thanks for my motherhood.

I was thinking about the advice that my mom, Barbara, has quoted from her mom, Mary, “Never do anything while your kids are asleep that you can do while they’re awake.” This was accompanied by a story of young Barbara coming home from school to see her mom lying on the couch reading a book, while the laundry rested unfolded and unsorted next to her.

I don’t follow that advice exactly—I get all kinds of things done when my kids are sleeping that I could technically do during the day—but I internalized that many years ago. I realized that what it really means is: teach your kids to respect your time; teach them to respect the office of “parent” and the fact that a parent is also an adult who has a bunch of stuff to do that doesn’t involve them or their whims; teach them to participate in housework; teach them to entertain themselves.

I was much better at this parenting approach when my older kids were little. I guess I was less tired and also iPads weren’t invented yet. Theo and Ida had structured “quiet time” (separate from nap time) every day from the time they were babies, wherein they played alone in their rooms for an hour or two, while I did whatever I felt like doing.

Sometime since Lars, I loosened the reins on that, and now that I’m trying to work from home (or write a blog post, or make a phone call, or do anything that might just be for me) and Polly is constantly asking me either to play with her or to turn on Sleeping Beauty, I’m attempting to bring some of that structure back. It’s a process...

I liked the way this writer put the experience of being a mother while also being a person:

This is from the book The Art of Screen Time, and I also liked the author Anya Kamanetz’s follow-up on the following page: 

“Rich had a book or a phone call or a typewriter to provide that escape. Today we have all three all the time.” (And we don’t know how the heck to handle them. Curse you, Steve Jobs!)

This woman’s perspective is only really tangential to my grandma’s advice; Mary raised 12 kids and later got her college degree at age 68. Who knows whether she ever felt “defrauded” by all those kids’ needs or wants, or whether she’d put her feelings in those terms. 

But I think Rich has a point about “this magnetic field” not being natural—being a construct of our society that should be challenged—and that’s where I think Mary would agree. As a mom, I’m raising people. I want to give them all my love and affection but I can’t possibly give them all my attention. I can’t possibly run myself ragged to make everything perfect for them, or sacrifice myself entirely to their every story and request and personal disaster.

But I also want to be their safe place and to discern when I’m really needed versus when it can wait. How am I supposed to know that? How can I tell the difference? Well, I hope that lying down reading a book when they’re asleep, and picking up the laundry later when they can help or they’re otherwise occupied, can only help me untangle that question for myself.