One of the first comments that an older woman said to me was: "Is that a little boy or a girl?" I wanted to help her so I pointed out the masculine clothing color, boy haircut, boy look and the woman said, "So she's a girl?" Hmm. I tried not to give the woman the reaction that perhaps she was looking for and went to run after the ball and kids.
Sometimes people do this quasi encouragement: "You must be so tired," "Kids are a pain," "You must be exhausted." That's their way of saying... it's hard work raising kids and you have three and seem to be doing a lot of other things. Or they do this negative comparison... "Your child is too skinny," "He's not dressed right," "He should be doing..."
I stop them and tell them that kids aren't a bother, but rather a blessing, and that if my attitude is "I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired," well of course I will be tired! I tell them that I think we can do a lot of things when we have a right attitude. Sometimes people see us and there are people that want to do the "quasi encouragement" or there are the people that want to do "negative comparison," like the woman in the park. Many woman feel overwhelmed with one child even with their parents taking care of them and cooking for the family. Would your mom do that? In Western culture, we have different norms.
We have one life to live and so I want to make the most of it. I think if we rise to challenges, live by right decisions and not emotions and keep our eyes lifted up we can do a lot of things and make a difference in people's lives. My life doesn't revolve around cooking or laundry or even my kids. I love them. I write about them here, but people, let's rise to the challenges of life and look outside of ourselves.
Sometimes people do this quasi encouragement: "You must be so tired," "Kids are a pain," "You must be exhausted." That's their way of saying... it's hard work raising kids and you have three and seem to be doing a lot of other things. Or they do this negative comparison... "Your child is too skinny," "He's not dressed right," "He should be doing..."
I stop them and tell them that kids aren't a bother, but rather a blessing, and that if my attitude is "I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired," well of course I will be tired! I tell them that I think we can do a lot of things when we have a right attitude. Sometimes people see us and there are people that want to do the "quasi encouragement" or there are the people that want to do "negative comparison," like the woman in the park. Many woman feel overwhelmed with one child even with their parents taking care of them and cooking for the family. Would your mom do that? In Western culture, we have different norms.
We have one life to live and so I want to make the most of it. I think if we rise to challenges, live by right decisions and not emotions and keep our eyes lifted up we can do a lot of things and make a difference in people's lives. My life doesn't revolve around cooking or laundry or even my kids. I love them. I write about them here, but people, let's rise to the challenges of life and look outside of ourselves.
I think a lot of older woman around here are lonely. Often they leave their husbands and travel hours away to raise their grandchild in a new and big city. Maybe they return home once a year to see their family. Sometimes it's like that until a child goes to school. A woman who has 1 year old twins recently let her mom take one of them away when the mom returned to her own home, various hours away. They will be reunited again in 7 months. She saw nothing strange about what she did. She did see something impossibly strange with raising all of the kids herself.
Some of these woman feel insecure and don't make friends. There are a lot of people in this circumstance. My heart goes out to them when I hear how lonely they are or that they don't have any free time of their own (because they are with the kids, do the cooking, etc.). So I'm trying to think of how to help them. I was given a room to use and this week started to get some of those woman together to paint glass bottles (do crafts), hopefully to love on them and help them create friendships between themselves.
The man who gave me a room to use keeps talking to me about "his" ideas. Yesterday he had another one. He came up to me and asked what I do "really well." I laughed and tried to tell him that I do a lot of things, but not necessarily one thing really really well. He tried again, "what could you win." I told him everyone else would probably win in a contest. Competition is pretty tough over here;) Then an older woman next to me whispered to me, "you can bake."
He said, "I'd like to do a city-wide televised bake-off." Yikes. Did I mention that I'm not Jaime Oliver? And I think he's hoping I'd win!
I'm happy that various people locally have started to bake. One of those woman said, "I make zucchini bread every day now." They love that vegetables can go in cakes and breads!
We will see what happens. I'll keep you posted.
Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day:)
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