In the past I’ve been matter of fact when reserving a wedding hall, but this time, I cheered out loud after putting down the phone and finding out a hall was available for the date we wanted.

We found something quickly and easily, and I’m relieved and grateful to have a spacious and comfortable hall that will amply accommodate all of our guests. My hope is that everyone involved will feel it is a joyous and expansive event.

I have already reserved the hall and caterer, and sent the advance partial payment to each, and contacted the band to let them know about the location change.

In the last few weeks, every time I spoke with my son about wedding plans, he’d ask me what was happening and sounded stressed. I kept trying to be reassuring, saying, “It’s fine, I’m not organizing it but someone else is; this is what’s happening and it’s going to be done.” When I told him the night of my last post that I had spoken to his kallah and was considering a location change, I expected him to sound even more stressed.

I was surprised that he was very chilled and positive about the possibility. He had absolutely no concern about the location being changed at this late stage.

The next morning, I called my son to tell him I found a wedding hall available for the date we wanted. When I told him which it was, he told me it was the hall he liked most! I had no idea – after they got engaged I asked what he preferred as far as a hall, and he said he didn’t really care, as long as his kallah was happy.

But he did care. So finding out I was about to reserve the hall he was most partial to added to my happiness.

I spoke to him later that day and updated him, letting him know I had booked the hall and the caterer, and filling him in on some other details. He sounded pleased about it all. I told him, “I don’t understand. Every time I spoke to you about wedding plans, you sounded stressed; now I’m making these changes at this point, and you sound so relaxed and calm. Why?”

He told me that now that I’m in charge of arranging the details, he feels more relaxed because I have a lot of experience.

My energy has shifted from being uneasy about the wedding to feeling relaxed and positive again. It wasn’t easy for me to speak up – it really was unpleasant to bring up concerns that could inconvenience and frustrate others because of the late date – but I’m so glad I did. I was concerned there was a likelihood for a lot of frustration with so many different details to coordinate in making a non-wedding hall into a wedding hall. I hope that it will be a relaxed and enjoyable wedding for everyone.

Avivah

PS – You may be wondering about how much more this upgrade is going to cost. We’ll actually be spending a drop less for a much larger and nicer hall, double the guests for the meal and a couple of nicer touches that we weren’t going to have before, as well as the planning being much more streamlined. Isn’t that nice?

I always have a full schedule but the last month has been over- the-top busy.

I recently noticed that I’m overreacting to things the kids are doing that I don’t like. Yes, sometimes whatever it is is annoying, but I have demonstrated high levels of patience and forbearance in situations much more challenging than these. So I know it’s not the situation that’s the problem, but something about me.

When reflecting on this, I realized two things:

Realization 1: I have too many time dependent activities I need to be at with the kids. I’ve known for years about myself that time pressure brings out my absolute worst qualities, and to compensate, try to build margin around time dependent activities and schedule them cautiously.

Well, cautious scheduling is not what I have going on now. There are many appointments to take care of in addition to extracurricular summer activities for the kids at home in Camp Mommy, and I’ve been out daily with the kids at these different commitments. I realized, I’ve got too much going on and I’ve got to cut this down.

All of the doctor/dental/hearing test stuff has to be done, as do visitations with the twins’ parents, a National Insurance committee meeting to determine eligibility for ds6 since the country is changing the rules of child allowances for foster children, social worker visits, preparatory school meetings – but I have changed what I can and that has made a difference.

In the last week we’ve finished the swimming lessons that had us out three days a week, and cancelled horseback riding, which I had only recently begun two weeks before. (That decision deserves a post of its own because it was a very empowering choice.)

I enjoy going out with the kids daily for some kind of activity, particularly now that it’s the Nine Days and they can’t use the pool. Going out breaks up our day and is a nice change of pace for us all. It’s not a time pressure when it’s dependent on me, I can go where and when I want, and stay as long or as short a time as I want.

A couple of recent outings included:

Playing with newborn puppies- We were invited by one of our Shabbos guests to come visit his newborn puppies. The puppies still had their eyes shut and were crawling around; we were there quite a long time and the kids enjoyed them very much. We were invited to come regularly to play with them and we will probably go back, but I won’t make a commitment to a regular day or time because I don’t want to create pressure for myself.

Another trip was to the public sprinklers in the center of Tiberias. We packed a picnic lunch and the kids had a wonderful time. It’s fascinating to watch how much enjoyment children can generate with almost no props – other than two plastic bags they found, it was just the sprinklers. But they played with the water in various ways, had different kinds of races with one another, and just kept finding new ways to entertain themselves in this one area.

I find that the lower key an activity is, the less expectation and pressure there is and the more enjoyment we all have. This morning I was thinking of taking the kids to the cable cars in Haifa, but hesitated, wondering if it would be worth the effort to find parking and then the money spent. Instead, I took them to a park in the city we were in that I found after cruising around for just a few minutes. The park was built on a steep hill so there were four levels to the park – each level had just a couple of items on it; there was nothing spectacular or especially engaging about any individual part of it. But the kids loved going from one level to another, and we spent almost three hours there.

Realization 2: I have been recognizing that I’m using all of my patience in the course of a day and don’t have extra margin. And that’s true.

It’s also true that our physical capacities are affected by our thoughts, and I’m disempowering myself by defining myself as having my patience maxxed out, and mentally going over all the things I’m doing to explain to myself why I’m feeling my patience is wearing thin.

I was out with the kids for eight hours today – it was a really good day for everyone but tiring as well. I was driving home at the end of all of the activities and the thought flashed through my mind, “I’m so tired.” Then I caught myself and asked myself, why am I telling myself that? Why not think about how energized I am by the things I do, how blessed I am to have plenty of energy to do all that I need to do, how patient and loving a parent I am? That’s a much more helpful focus and feels a lot better, and it’s just the flip side of the same coin. We can focus on what isn’t and what we aren’t, or on what we is good and what we want to be.

Can you see how thinking the two different sets of thoughts will impact how a person feels?

I truly have a lot going on now, that requires me to carefully and proactively schedule commitments to myself and others in to my planner so that everything gets done and I still get sleep. I burned the candle at both ends for too many years, and I choose not to shortchange myself in that way anymore.

Every day when I start to feel a little tense about how much I’m doing, I remind myself how grateful I am that I can do the things that are important to me, that my schedule is full of things that are meaningful and stimulating for me. And I mean it. But you can’t say it too often!

Avivah

On Sunday morning, my husband and I traveled to Jerusalem with the five youngest kids (almost 15, 11, 7, 6, 6) to be with my oldest son’s family for the “chalake” (first haircut) of his three year old son.

I was apprehensive about attending; this was the first time since the twins came over a year ago that we planned an outing like this and I was concerned about how they would deal with the long travel time, the large number of people, and the kind of effort it would take to supervise them.

But they handled it beautifully! I marvel thinking about how carefully we had to navigate every small situation a year ago, and now there were loads of people in an unfamiliar setting with stimulation of all kinds, mostly things I didn’t know to expect so didn’t prepare them for – and they took it in stride and enjoyed it all.

The chalake was beautiful; our son and his wife are a great team, it was a beautiful event and of course our grandson is adorable. It was lovely to be with all of the extended family on our side and my daughter-in-law’s side, whom we only see when there’s a family celebration. The company and food was wonderful and we spent four hours there instead of the two hours we anticipated.

We finally headed for home at 5:30 pm but hit unexpected delays on the highway. By 7 pm, I thought it would be a good idea time to stop at a rest stop to give everyone dinner and let them run around. My past experience has been that stopping for a break at a time of congestion ends up saving travel time: by the time you get back on the road the traffic is flowing freely again so you can travel much more quickly.

That was unfortunately not the case that night. After an extended dinner and play break at the rest stop, I assumed the children would fall asleep quickly in the car; if we had been traveling faster than five to ten kilometers an hour, that probably would have happened.

Instead, our tired and overextended children couldn’t stop picking at each other, physically and verbally. I commented to my husband that all that irritability is why people have screens in their vehicles to keep their children occupied instead of having to deal with their boredom and behaviors.

We’re faced with choices every day; how you respond time after time determines the person you become. My husband and I could verbally agitate about our own exasperation at the unusual congestion at a time and place there is rarely traffic and the difficulties of dealing with the kids in this situation. We could try to control our growing irritation at the repeated picking at one another, and try to patiently remind them to keep their hands to themselves and speak kindly.

Or we could embrace it as an opportunity. If it was sent to us, there’s something better we could do with it than tolerate it.

We decided to put on some music to shift the mood.

It instantaneously changed the atmosphere in the car. Not just for the kids, but for me. I was driving and was so tired that speaking was an effort; I had been up since 4:15 am and it was about 8:30 pm by that time. Initially I wanted to listen to something different we hadn’t heard before, and then realized the kids would enjoy familiar music much more.

So my husband put on a song they knew well and the kids cheered in delight! That was the end of any conflict and quarreling for the next two hours. We sang song after song together for the next ninety minutes, sometimes with clapping, sometimes with exaggerated funny or happy voices.

At 10 pm the traffic finally broke up and after ten minutes of driving at a normal speed, the four youngest were all soundly asleep. I turned off the music and my husband and I enjoyed an adult conversation for the final forty minutes of the drive. (Yes, it took us over five hours to get home.) At 10:45 pm we finally got home and we walked the kids straight to their beds.

It wasn’t an easy trip, but it was a very good trip, and all of us were left with a good feeling about the entire day.

Avivah

I met a friend on the last day of Pesach and she said to me, “How is your holiday going? Probably wonderful.”

Yes, it was wonderful. We enjoyed having almost all of our married children and grandchildren with us throughout the holiday and it was really, really nice. They scheduled their visits so that they came one after another (other than the youngest two couples who came together at the end). Since they didn’t overlap, there were only sixteen of us from a few days before Pesach until a couple of days after Pesach ended, so there weren’t huge numbers at a time.

We all appreciated having time with one family at a time. Though it’s beautiful to have everyone at once, it’s nice to have the slower and quieter pace that allows us to spend time with each family in a more meaningful way. Though to outsiders it could seem like effortless and seamless teamwork because things run harmoniously, even sixteen undemanding people for three meals a day is still a good bit of work.

Our oldest couple will be celebrating their seventh anniversary in six weeks and I’ve never written about the topic of hosting married children because I’ve been concerned that someone might read what I wrote and think I was being negative or critical. I deeply appreciate all of our married children and feel blessed that each of them have married someone we all like so much, so my comments aren’t coming from a negative place at all.

We are extremely blessed that everyone gets along and is respectful of one another so although there are a lot of personalities present, we have a minimum of conflict even with a lot of people coming and going. However, the physical effort of hosting is always present and I’d like to share about that since I think it’s an issue many struggle with it but don’t talk about; it’s a reality that needs to be navigated both physically and emotionally.

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Working together and getting things done as a family is something I value. This is in part because we’ve been a large homeschooling family for years, but also because we’ve lived on one income throughout the years. That meant making conscious choices about how we spend money; it was a reality that if we didn’t pay someone else to do the things we wanted or needed done, we were going to have to do it ourselves.

That meant washing our dishes instead of using disposables, cooking our food rather than eating out, cleaning our home rather than hiring cleaning help, and later on, learning DIY skills to upgrade our home rather than not have the renovations done at all due to the cost being too much. If I ask our children to do something, they generally do it with a willing attitude, and working together has been a positive dynamic for us.

Every family has their own values, their own expectations of how much children participate, what kinds of jobs they do, how much guests help out, and how married couples are hosted. Obviously families can’t and shouldn’t all be the same as ours, and as our children have gotten married, there are different expectations from different people.

One married son told me on Pesach that most families don’t expect their children to help out in the way that I do. That’s very likely true, since most families don’t do most things the way that I do. During the same conversation I learned that my position on a different but related issue is ‘old school’ so maybe the way I do things is out of date. If it’s true that kids don’t help out that much, how do families get things done? Someone has to do them, so who is picking up the slack? It’s not fair or reasonable for it all to fall on the mother.

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Here are some general points to take into account when hosting married children.

For starters, young couples are into each other. Their focus is on each other, and usually they spend most of the time they are visiting interacting with one another rather than the rest of us. They will generally just show up for meals and sometimes not even for all of the meals. Even at the meals, their interactions are mostly with each other.

When a woman is pregnant, she’s tired and wants to rest a lot. She won’t be around except for the meals.

When they have their first child they are busy with their child. This child will take up all of their time and energy; they’ll be tired from being up in the night, from the work of parenting…. When there are more children, it’s so much effort to take care of children in someone else’s home, on a different schedule, and it’s so much work to pack and travel to make the visit – being a guest in someone else’s home is already a big contribution on their part. They’re exhausted and need to rest.

Someone told me that no daughter-in-law likes to be at her in-laws home; this was said so I wouldn’t take the lack of enjoying being here personally and understand it’s a global phenomenon. As a mother-in-law who wants all of our children to feel comfortable, that’s a discouraging thing to hear but I certainly understand it’s more comfortable to visit the home in which someone was raised and where everything is familiar. In raising children I’ve found boys to be more easygoing than girls, and have also found this to be true of sons-in-law.

People have different strengths and different ways to show their appreciation of the efforts being made to host them. Even for those who want to make a significant effort to help out, their capacity is limited because they need to be present for their spouse and children.

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As more and more children get married, the dynamic continues to shift. When our first son got married, I still had two daughters in their early twenties who were extremely helpful, along with my next son. There was plenty of help around me and the extra work involved in hosting a young couple didn’t create much pressure.

Then my two daughters got married within nine months of my son’s wedding. We then had three couples coming to visit for Shabbos, and just one older teenager helping out at the same time that I still had a lot of young children around; the youngest was a baby and the one above him was about five. Our eight, nine and eleven year olds helped out but it’s not the same as the help of older children (everyone was homeschooled at the time so there were no quiet mornings to clean up or cook in advance).

This becomes the reality for most families – the work that was shared by many becomes shared by fewer and fewer people at the same time the number of people being hosted increases.

As our children have married, my husband and I have shouldered most of the work that was previously done by that child. We are still raising a house of children and tending to many other responsibilities, and our work load keeps increasing. As much as I enjoy the holidays, it’s a massive amount of work beforehand, during the actual holiday, and then afterwards (cleanup this year includes washing sixteen sets of guest linens after Pesach).

Thank G-d, I’m organized, I work quickly, I have good stamina, I usually have a good attitude, our teen boys are very helpful – and everything gets done.

As I’m doing all that I do, I continually wonder how other mothers are doing it. Because while they may not have young children around as I still do, they are often older and not necessarily in as good health as I am. There are a lot of expectations and even if you keep things as simple as possible, there’s no way to bypass the work involved unless you take everyone away to a hotel.

I remember asking my first mechutenaiste (mother of the person our child married) after our children were engaged how she had space to have all of her married children at once time. My thought at the time was only on the logistics of hosting everyone together as our family expanded.

She answered, “Avivah, you’re going to see as you get older that you don’t want to have everyone over together. It becomes too much work, too much noise, and you’ll have one family over at a time.” I’m at the point where I’m seeing that shift happen.

To do the cooking for Sukkos back in October, I got up at 3 am for the two days leading to the holiday so that I could cook uninterrupted before the younger kids were around and would need most of my focus. For Pesach I didn’t get up earlier than five in the morning, because I don’t have to supervise the twins as intensely as I did then, so I could also work when they were awake.

Generally I’m glad that I can do all that I do and grateful for my visiting family. Sometimes, though, I feel my efforts are taken for granted and that’s very hard for me.

My primary love language is quality time; I’ll make the effort to spend time with others and appreciate when they do the same. My secondary love language that is almost as strong as my primary language is acts of service; that means I’ll extend myself and work hard for those I care about, but it also means that I perceive love when those around me, help me. Every person perceives and receives love in the way that they give it. When family members don’t want to be around except to eat and don’t offer to help, it’s a double challenge for me, and I have to make a conscious effort to remind myself that it doesn’t mean they don’t value or care about me.

Now, at the same time that I want to appreciate each person as they are and be accepting if helping isn’t something they want to do, I don’t want to be a martyr. I don’t think I can or should do everything on my own, so the issue becomes how and from whom to ask for help. Some married children notice how much I’m doing and want to step in and make it easier for me; others aren’t as geared towards helping in this way.

I try to honor my own need for rest and do what needs to be done in a way that won’t wear me out. For Sukkos and Pesach I use disposable dishes to reduce my workload. I make larger amounts of fewer dishes to simplify the menu. I don’t offer to babysit grandchildren in order to give their mothers a break, though sometimes when asked will agree.

I set boundaries around what I can and can’t do – for example, I’ve told them that we can pick them up from the bus stop twenty five minutes away to save them from needing to take a connecting bus that comes directly here, but not after a certain time of day and if more than one couple is coming, they have to coordinate among themselves because I no longer will make that pickup more than once.

One married child wanted to visit the Shabbos a week before Pesach and stay for a few days. At first I agreed, clarifying that they would have to take care of their own meals and meal clean-up, but then was honest with myself that it was too much pressure for me to have guests at a time when I had so much to do, and told them we would welcome their visit a different time instead.

With time everyone continues to shift and adjust, so I’m very much a work in progress. I would love to hear your experiences and insights into being a married child or parent of married children when being hosted or hosting; please share in the comments what makes things run smoothly or what have been the pitfalls and how you’ve learned to avoid them!

Avivah

When the twins came eleven months ago, they had absolutely no ability to moderate themselves in any way.

Emotionally, if something upset them there was an immediate outburst. Dd6 went from beaming with happiness to throwing herself on the floor and screaming in an instant; there was no buildup or warning. Ds5 would rage and throw things or hit/kick someone or something. They lashed out or had an emotional outburst about anything that bothered them, which was most of the time. They verbally picked at one another and fought constantly.

The lack of regulation wasn’t only seen when they were upset. When they weren’t supervised, even for a moment or two, their expressions of impulsivity left me wondering, “What in the world were they thinking?”

There were endless instances – literally all day long, and I could never predict what they would do because there was nothing in their brains that told them to pause and consider the consequences. Their behavior was like a very young toddler but they had the physical capacity to get into things that a young child doesn’t have. I’ll give examples but these aren’t necessarily the worst or most difficult, just what comes to mind.

In the beginning I took them on an outing twice a day and would start each day by going somewhere with them. One morning I told them we were going to the park and they jumped with joy. Everyone was dressed, except ds6 didn’t yet have shoes on. Every night I put his shoes in the same place, and knowing he could easily find them, I told him to go put his shoes on. He went into his room, and emerged a few minutes later – without shoes and without a stitch of clothing on his body.

He pooped in the yard daily, no matter how many times I told him to use the bathroom. He even pooped in the pool – we emptied out all the water and I explained we were doing that because when he pooped in it, it made it dirty and we want the pool to be clean for them to swim in. I explained that a number of times that morning (he used to ask the same questions again and again and again). While we were refilling the pool, my husband agreed that they could stand in the pool. As I was sitting there watching them, ds pulled down his pants and began to poop in the pool!

Coloring/smearing poop on walls, making holes in walls/pool/trampoline net, cutting down fruit trees, breaking toys, ripping books, emptying full bottles of shampoo down the drain when they went to the bathroom – we had thousands of shekels of damage. It happened very quickly and within just a minute or two of not watching them. They took out anything from anywhere, no matter how high a shelf it was stored on. I could never guess what would happen next because there was no rhyme or reason that I could see. Whatever impulse came to mind is what they did. It wasn’t purposeful malice – there was simply no ‘stop/pause/consider’ process present in their brains.

While we’ve seen huge improvements in this area, the twins are both still impulsive. Just yesterday I went into their bathroom and saw a bath towel stuffed in the toilet. When I took it out, there was a cereal bowl and a crushed mini aluminum pan underneath. Why? Because someone in that moment felt like doing that.

The evening before, I called them in from play for dinner – “Everyone come inside and sit down at the table!” They came running in, bypassing the living room to go directly to dd’s room, climbed up the bunkbed where I had a short time before put a pile of clean laundry, and approximately ninety seconds after I told them to come in to eat, I went into their room and found them gleefully flinging the clean clothes all over the floor.

I can’t put into words the intensity of living with highly dysregulated children. It was physically and emotionally exhausting, and daily I felt challenged in a way that I hadn’t been stretched before. That’s one part of the unseen backdrop to the last eleven months.

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I’m rereading a great book called Dirt to Soil, by Gabe Brown; it’s a fascinating read about a man who completely shifted his way of thinking about farming from the conventional poison-the-dirt approach to a regenerative approach of healing the planet. He quotes a speaker at a conference who said something like, “If you want small changes, change what you do. If you want big changes, change the way you think.”

This statement deeply resonated with me because this is true of so many things, certainly parenting. When you shift the way you think about your children, you see significant qualitative changes. The way you think about what you see and interpret it is critical. If your bottom line belief is that your child is always doing the best he can and you view their misdeeds with compassion and even curiosity, you’re going to respond very differently than if you view them in a negative way.

I’ve talked before about the importance of moderating your own emotions, but I have to state it again because this is the most important thing you can do as a parent before any other response.

There are many times a child has done something annoying (see above and then imagine that every single day, throughout the day) and my first thought is to correct them. And often I do and that’s appropriate. But sometimes I pause and ask them – not demandingly, but with genuine interest – why did they do that? Sometimes there’s impulsiveness as described above, but sometimes it becomes clear the child has a good intention to do the right thing but the results look like a problem.

For example, I saw a large pile of things on the floor in the hallway – ie a big mess – and there was water all over the floor. I went into dd’s room to see what was happening. She told me she and ds11 were cleaning for Pesach – so they had taken a lot of things out from where they were supposed to be and swept them into a pile outside of her room, and now were washing the floor. If I were to get annoyed, think how badly the child would feel – it’s a terrible feeling to be trying to help and do something good, and then have someone be angry or disappointed with you. I was able to thank them and be appreciative, and then let them know what we do with items like those, and show them how to finish cleaning the floor.

Ds6 exhibits a lot of aggressive behavior when I pick him up from kindergarten; I’ve learned he needs time to decompress before he can interact appropriately with anyone. Sure enough, a short time after arriving home dd6 started screaming because he spoke to her in an unpleasant way. I looked at him and thought with compassion about how hard it is for him to be surrounded all day by kids who struggle with emotional regulation.

He was sitting on the couch looking defiant so I went to sit next to him. He glanced at me warily, knowing he just said something inappropriate. I looked at him kindly, put my arm around him and gave him a big side hug without saying anything else. His hostility instantly melted; he immediately looked at dd and said sincerely, “I’m sorry”. I wasn’t trying to get him to apologize. I wasn’t trying to get any result, other than for him to know he was seen and loved as he was in that moment.

That’s not my response in the majority of situations. Usually I would take his hand and look into his eyes and say, something like, “How do you think it makes dd feel when you speak to her in that way? Is there a different way you could tell her how you feel? What could you do now to make the situation right?” I use the incidents as an opportunity to replay the situation and model how to appropriately communicate.

When I’m feeling irritated and annoyed, nothing positive or helpful is going to come out of my mouth; at the best it will be neutral and that’s what I strive for in moments that I’m feeling out of sorts – and that’s an accomplishment when so many negative things could be said in a moment of frustration. However, I know that when I think about my child kindly, it instantly changes what I see and what I say to a higher level interaction, so I’m constantly striving to increase my compassionate view of our children.

Avivah