Lemony Webbles

musing mother

Now that my kids are pretty much past their babyhood (except for Maya's insistence on using bottles and being in the early stages of potty training), I've been thinking about the next few years for them and how I want to raise them/what kind of mother I want to be/what kind of environment I want for them/what I want them to learn and I have a few preliminary musings on the topic/s.

What kind of mother I want to be: I've noticed that I've been avoiding places where moms hang out with their kids during the day and not seeking out so many play dates for the kids as I used to. I think the reason for this is that I want to do something different from what I've seen around me in mothering, and like Faulkner Fox talks about in her new book, Dispatches From A Not So Perfect Life, I've had to separate a little to try to come into my own as a mother and not get turned around by things that drive me crazy about the way stay-at-home motherhood is set up culturally here/the long distance we have yet to go to find true equality for the women that are mothers. I won't rant about those things here, Faulkner does a good enough job of that in her book. But I will say that I often feel like I am back in high school when I am talking to other mothers because I see materialism and competitiveness dominating conversations, popularity and exclusiveness being really important, looks being really important, and all the other weeds that pop up when we are feeling like we don't know the purpose of our lives and feel stuck in an insular world where we can't see or appreciate our true value to the larger world. I've had a much easier time finding myself as a mother when I'm talking to people that aren't parents of young children about larger issues that are important to me like seeing beauty all around and in people and how to find ways to serve people as a family, etc etc.

What I want them to learn: I want them both to learn that their thoughts, speech and actions are important, not so much how they look. This may seem obvious and doable, but I think it will be a challenge when so much societal garbage says the opposite. But aside from cultural images of women to deal with, there's just the everyday interactions with adults that they will have to try to understand. Especially Georgia who gets so much attention for having red hair, etc. I've always struggled with how to help her make sense of people's comments because she doens't understand what the big deal is. It's gotten a lot easier since I cut her hair short and since it's not so curly but that's not really the answer, it's just given me time to think about how to train her to think at a higher level. But parental machinations aside, I think both girls have learned the most lately about interacting with adults and about what friendship can be from the love that all the 'dandongs' have shown them. Love really teaches so much and makes them soak up it's 'lessons'. And it really helps me appreciate them more too; I can get some perspective after dealing with one too many tantrums that day when someone delights in the natural goodness of my children.

Alright, enough rambling for now. More later.