Here's Theresa's review from their last meeting!
VIDEO REVIEW
This week continued the MOPS DVD curriculum, “What Every Mom Needs”. The focus was on help. Here is what we saw:
The camera pans in on the clock which shows 4:30am in a glowing red. A mother is woken from her sleep by her crying baby and goes to feed him. Once the baby is back asleep, the mom grabs a short cat-nap before her toddler comes bounding into the room at 5:45am. Her hope that the toddler might resume sleep with her is short lived and at 6:10am she and her little boy are out of bed and ready to face the day. Its potty time, and then downstairs where she the TV on for her toddler so she can get her baby who is now awake for the morning. Mom comes back downstairs with crying baby in her arms and proceeds to prepare waffles for her toddler while simultaneously holding her baby and heating up his bottle. In the midst of this, her toddler falls and starts crying. She puts one arm around her older child to console him and uses the other arm to hold the baby who is also screaming. Once the waffles are ready, she breaks them up into bite-sized pieces, steals a bite, and then brings them to her son. It is then time to feed the baby his bottle. Finally, there is a moment of peace. When breakfast is over, it’s upstairs to get the kids dressed. The mom tries to dress a moving target while her baby screams on the floor. Once big brother is dressed, she dresses baby. 9:00am… mom is still in her PJ’s. Her toddler is thirsty, so they head downstairs for a drink, which spills all over his shirt, and it’s back upstairs to get changed. Baby is ready for a nap, and mom needs to take a shower, so big brother gets to watch another show. When mom finished showering, baby is ready to get out of his crib and big brother dances around her as she attempts to get dressed. Mom proceeds to blow dry her hair while simultaneously bouncing her baby in his bouncer with her foot and the toddler plays with his remote control car around the bathroom. A quick application of makeup and finally everyone is ready to go. Mom packs up the diaper bag, puts the baby in the car seat, brings it out to the car, buckles her toddler into his seat and turns the key. It is 11:30am.
I love this intro because it gives such a genuine account of all the juggling we do as moms in just one morning. A task that took us maybe an hour before we had kids is now a 5 hour ordeal!
Following this intro was a table discussion between moms about the topic, “Help”. Since the table conversation on the video is a question and answer discussion much like what we had during our own discussion time, I have blended them together for the review. Here are the questions they asked:
1. What was a critical turning point when you realized just how much you needed help?
2. Why do we resist asking for help?
3. What are some ways we can get help?
To answer the first question, one mom said that when her second child was an infant, she was up all night with him and suddenly she realized she was not going to be able to rest during the day because she needed to be available and energetic for her little girl. She started having an anxiety attack just thinking about it. Another mom shared her struggles with the first days of motherhood and described how unprepared she felt and thought she’d be a failure having to ask for help so early on. A mom in our group shared how she had such anxiety, she needed to go on medication. As for myself, my first baby hadn’t been napping or sleeping through the night and I was so exhausted. I needed to feel like I had at least accomplished something so I threw in a big load of laundry. I didn’t realize (and didn’t check because of my exhaustion and haste), that a pen had been left in one of the pockets. This pen exploded all over the clothes I was trying to clean. I pretty much lost it then and there! How about you? Was there a big turning point where you said, “I can’t do this!”?
The answers for the second question, “Why do we resist help?” ranged from feelings of guilt and indebtedness, to not wanting to appear helpless or unable, to comparing ourselves with other moms who never seemed to need help, or having high expectations for the way things should be carried out in our absence and therefore, not trusting someone else with our precious little ones. I think we can all relate to all or some of these reasons.
So how do we cast these insecurities, anxieties, and feelings aside, swallow our pride and finally ask for help? There were many ideas offered by the moms in the video and the moms in our group. One mom said she often had people offer to help, but just assumed they were only saying it to be nice and since she didn’t want to impose, she never followed through. She finally realized that people are sincere, and aren’t going to offer if they really aren’t willing. If you wait too long to respond to the offer, you might end up feeling awkward when an occasion does arise where you need their help. So, one day this mom changed her answer to offers from an empty, “Thank you, I’ll let you know” to “Absolutely, let me get my calendar!” and made it official right then and there. Another mom said she felt like she had to have a major event planned before asking for help with the kids, otherwise she felt guilty. Then she realized there were probably other moms who felt the same way and suggested a co-op with her neighbor. Not surprisingly, the neighbor jumped on board and they made arrangements to exchange babysitting so that they could go out on a date with their husbands once a month. In this situation, the ‘babysitter’ came to the home of the neighbor while her husband stayed home with her own kids. She watched her neighbor’s kids and put them to bed before relaxing with a book until the parents came home from their date. I have had a similar “co-op” with a neighbor of mine, but instead of going to each other’s homes, we plan our dates for earlier in the day, and whoever is ‘babysitting’ does so in their own home and the kids get the treat of playing together. If we know one or the other is having a rough day or week, we will have each other’s kids over for a few hours to provide an opportunity for rest. Even though we do the co-op a little differently, it is essentially the same idea and I have to say it is a great way to get around paying for a babysitter. It is also nice to know there is another experienced mom that you can trust with your kids. The mom in our group who mentioned her anxiety also shared that her doctor told her that more and more women are in need of anxiety medication probably because instead of moms staying home and helping each other, many moms today are trying to juggle outside work and motherhood. As a result, those who stay home don’t have the network of help they need. My parents both grew up with their aunts, uncles, and cousins living on the same street. I grew up within walking distance of my cousins, and grandparents. Living this close to family is pretty rare nowadays. So how can we make a network for ourselves? I want to encourage you to get out and meet your neighbors. Take a walk and if you see another mom with her kids outside, don’t be shy. I promise it will be a treat to the other mother as well if you go up and talk to her. It is important for us as moms to build a network close to home. I can say motherhood is so much less stressful after having developed friendships with other moms in my neighborhood. They are like family to me now, our kids play together, we talk with each other on an adult level and we help each other out.
Sometimes we wonder if a request for help is “valid”. While I think that there are more valid situations than we give ourselves credit for, we also have to remember that there are people in our own homes who we can benefit from. Sometimes we don’t ask our husbands or children for help because we assume they should already know we need it! The best way to get help from our husbands is to ask for it. And sometimes it’s all in the way we say it. The moms in our discussion group realized that being sincere and specific brought the best results. Saying something like, “Honey, I had a rough night with the baby last night, do you think there would be a time in the day you could take the kids so I can get a nap in?” will get us a lot farther than, “It would be nice if I could get a nap sometime today.” We also have to remember that our husbands may need a little extra guidance – especially if they are new dads who work outside the home, but at the same time we need to be sensitive not to over-direct taking away their ability to step up to the plate and surprise us. We can get so hung up on the way we want things done that our husbands might resist helping because they feel like they will never meet our expectations. If we need their help, we need to show them how thankful we are for it, even if they don’t do things exactly the way we would. I know my daughter loves “daddy time” and it probably has a lot to do with the fact that he does things differently than I do! We might often avoid asking for help from our children, especially when they are younger, because a task will actually take longer to finish and it is likely that we will still have to be involved in some way. Even though this is true in many cases, we are selling ourselves and our children short when we do not ask them to participate in the jobs at hand. The time we invest in teaching and encouraging our children to contribute to household chores will not only mold their character and give them a sense of responsibility, but it will be extremely helpful to us in the long run. My daughter is three and while there are many instances where her “helping” is actually more burdensome, there are also a handful of chores that she has been doing regularly enough to actually be of help. She takes pride in doing them and since I know this desire to be helpful will not last forever, now is the time to nurture it.
BIBLICAL APPLICATION
If you look at Genesis 2:20-23 you will see that Adam didn’t have a suitable “helper” so God created him Eve. We can get so caught up in our own needs, that we often forget that God’s purpose for us as wives is to be our husbands’ helpers. We should be aware of all the stresses, pressures and challenges our husbands face at work each day and ask ourselves how we can be of help.
Next I think it would be a good idea to look at the book of Ruth. Specifically, verses 1:16-18 and 2:11-12. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the book of Ruth, I want to encourage you to read the whole story since it is only a couple pages long. It tells of a daughter-in-law (Ruth) and a mother-in-law (Naomi) who are left with no one except each other after the deaths of their husbands. Naomi tells Ruth she can go back to her family, but Ruth insists on staying with Naomi. Without Ruth, Naomi would have had a very tough time acquiring food, etc. as an elderly widow with no descendants. Ruth uses her energy and youth to glean the wheat fields, working hard in the heat to collect whatever wheat the harvesters miss. While doing so, she catches the eye of the owner of the field who recognizes her loyalty to her mother-in-law, her hard work ethic and her noble character. In the end, this man marries Ruth and she and her mother-in-law are taken care of. The reason I wanted to mention this story is because it reminds us that our lives are all intertwined and we need each other. No one can do life on their own. It is important for us to remember this and to avoid convincing ourselves that we should be able to do everything alone. God doesn’t expect us to and he certainly didn’t create us to. Also, the book of Ruth is a good reminder that we “reap what we sow”. "I've been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband…May the LORD repay you for what you have done.” (Ruth 2:11-12). While we should never give help with the expectation of having it returned, it is just natural that when we help others, others will in turn help us. It may seem like we don’t have anything left to give some days, and on those days don’t worry about it; just worry about taking care of your family. But if there are times when you feel you are able, call your neighbor out of the blue and offer to watch their kids for a couple hours. If you are making chicken noodle soup for your family, make an extra batch and freeze it so you have it on hand when a fellow family is under the weather. Make some extra batches of food for friends expecting new babies. God makes it clear. Help others first, then He will provide the help we need.
Finally, I want to look at Psalm 121 “I lift my eyes up to the hills, where does my help come from? It comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and Earth…” Again, I encourage you to read the entire psalm. It is a reminder to us that God made everything from the stars in the sky to the birds in the air. He surely has the ability to help us with whatever situation we are facing! While we can pull from our neighbors, our husbands, our children, our mothers, etc. there is no one more able, willing and capable of helping than the Lord, our God, the creator of this universe. We need to trust that He will indeed provide the help we need. I often find that in situations where I need help and my resources are unavailable, God is often telling me all I need is Him. Those moments can be challenging, but when I get through them with no one but God by my side, it is even more fulfilling. Often we resist God’s help for the same reasons we resist the help of those around us. Let me assure you – God wants to help. He has more than enough energy and resources to help, he will always exceed our expectations and he doesn’t leave us indebted.
HOMEWORK
This week I want everyone to find some age-appropriate chores for their children. If they already have chores, find a new one. If they are under two years old, start planning what you might begin introducing to them when they are a little older. And don’t save all your house work for when they are napping. Your children naturally want to do what they see you doing. Something like dusting the furniture is easy for them to imitate at an early age and eventually they will be old enough to actually be of help with. To help us determine what chores might be appropriate for our children at their specific ages, Focus on the Family put together a wonderful guideline that you can retrieve here: http://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/parenting_challenges/motivating_kids_to_clean_up/age_appropriate_chores.aspx
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