How can you stand to be around your kids all day?

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>>you get so much credit for not losing your mind being home every single day with 8 kids. really.<<

Quick correction – there are actually nine kids. 😆

At the camp my dd13 was working at this summer, there were two adult women and another teen assistant in addition to her. She came home one day, once again telling me how amazed these two women were about me. I asked her how they could be impressed by me when they don’t know me from a hole in the wall? She said “They can’t understand how you can have all of us around all day – they said they would go crazy.” Now you see how easy it is to show you’re made of the stuff of angels – be able to tolerate your kids without checking in at the loony bin and that’s all the proof anyone will need. 🙂

“How can she stand to be around her kids the whole day? I mean, I like my kids but I don’t like them that much.” My dd has heard me say I think it’s unfortunate that this is such a common sentiment, but this is the first time she’s heard it herself, and this is exactly what she was asked. The women told my dd that Shabbos and Sundays are the hardest days of the week for them, because their kids are home (one was, ironically, a preschool teacher). One went on to tell dd:

“My kids get bored all the time.” My dd13 responded, “That’s because they go to school so they’re used to being entertained.” “Really??” This took the woman aback – she clearly had never considered this. After they asked her these questions and more, they continued discussing their perplexity with one another about me. “It must be the kind of personality that she has.” “Maybe all of her kids were just born good.” They were ‘mystified’, to quote dd.

My dd was laughing when she told us about this since she knows quite well that I’m a regular mom and that she and her siblings weren’t all ‘born good’. She said it seemed like they knew what they were offering as reasons couldn’t be the answer but they couldn’t think what else it could be.

So are you wondering what the answer is?? 🙂 I can reassure you that I wasn’t born with a special personality that equipped me to enjoy my kids any more than anyone else! By nature I’m not an especially patient person nor was I one of those women who just loved being around kids before having my own. Those qualities have been developed over time. See, you don’t need to be naturally saintly to enjoy having your kids around!

The secret to enjoying spending time with your kids, is to spend more time with them and make it enjoyable! When you spend relaxed time with your children, you enjoy them and are pleasant to them. They then respond to your pleasantness by behaving better and wanting to please you, to which you positively respond by wanting to spend more time with them….. It creates a positive spiral between you and your children, and this positive spiral is what makes it enjoyable for parents and children to spend lots of time together. Everyone likes being around people who love and respect them, right?

It’s not hard for me to be around my kids because I like them. I don’t mean that I love them – all parents love their children. I mean that I really like them. (Having well disciplined children makes this much easier- your positive view of them isn’t constantly being overshadowed by their bad behavior.) And as kids get older, they just get better and better. I’ve said it a couple of times before, but teenagers are awesome! They have the maturity and critical thinking skills to have really stimulating conversations and fun interactions. It’s kind of like getting to be around your friends all day. The myth of impossible teenagers is really a shame, since everyone buys into it and it becomes a self perpetuating reality, and parents end up missing the enjoyment of an amazing stage in their childrens’ lives.

Even though this concept is so simple, it’s foreign to our culture. Parenting is supposed to be hard, filled with struggle and aggravation. Motherhood and martyrdom seem to go hand in had. When someone tells me how wonderful I am for spending so much time with my kids, I know they just don’t understand. Raising children is work; it takes lots of time, energy, and effort. But I’m not suffering or gritting my teeth every day – I’m so grateful and feel so blessed; I often feel that it’s not fair my husband has to go to work all day and doesn’t get to spend the kind of time I do with the kids. It’s true that it took work to get to this point, but the hardest thing was probably to let go of my ideas that being around my kids was something to be endured.

Avivah

Comments

25 responses to “How can you stand to be around your kids all day?”

December 8, 2009

RACHEL

I do not homeschool, however I do keep my children home in the summer. I live in Brooklyn. People ask me all the time “don’t you go crazy with the children home.” I always answer that I don’t because I enjoy my children immensely.

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December 8, 2009

alpidarkomama

I don’t believe in the teenage myth either. An invention of the ’60s. 🙂 Totally agree with this post, of course, and get many similar comments. What a life. 🙂

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December 8, 2009

Orthonomics

Funny. I just caught your post after I wrote one about a school advertising a Sunday school day with the tag line: “How in the world is a mother supposed to accomplish anything if the kids are home?”

I’m always being asked how I don’t go crazy and I share your sentiments. And, no, my kids didn’t emerge from the womb “different” either although I’m asked about that too.

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1. December 8, 2009
  
  Avivah
  
  Rachel – welcome! I especially love hearing from parents who enjoy their children.
  
  alpidarkomama – Living the good life, aren’t we? 🙂 If people only knew what they were missing…..
  
  Orthonomics – I find advertising like that deeply disturbing. What is most disturbing isn’t the sentiment, but that they assume the sentiment is so universal to parents that expressing it is perfectly fine. And then we wonder why today’s kids are going off the derech at such a high rate and feel disenfranchised from their parents. Do you suppose kids are getting the message that they’re a nuisance and a burden?
  
  This reminds me of something my ds16 experienced a couple of years ago. He was in shul and a parenting lecture series for parents of teens was announced, and the person announcing it made some kind of commiserating statement about parents of teenagers, and everyone laughed. Ds was the only teen there, and came home and asked, “Why does everyone think it’s okay to speak badly about teenagers?” Do we really have a generation gap, or do we create it when we push our kids away?
  
  Okay, you see this just gets me going. 🙂 It’s one more example of how we in the frum world are seriously off track regarding how we raise our children.
  
  Reply
December 8, 2009

Orthonomics

Please cross-comment. You express shared thoughts so well.

As an answer to your question: Do you suppose kids are getting the message that they’re a nuisance and a burden? I’d say YES.

I’m as disturbed as you. It is one thing to market a service such as an afternoon program in terms of what the kids will be getting or in practical terms, parents who need to work on the weekend or late into the evening. It is something totally different to market the program as a way to get those pesky brats out of the house.

Now if we are producing pesky brats (and I’ve had enough experiences to think this might be the case in too many households), perhaps what is needed is more parental education, time, and practice. Increased separation won’t solve that problem.

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1. December 8, 2009
  
  Avivah
  
  Our schools are disempowering parents as they inflate and overrate their own sense of importance in the lives of kids, which has resulted in longer and longer school days from younger and younger ages, decreasing the amount of time families have together and directly increasing the sense of distance between family members. Parents have been told so often that the schools and professional educators have the answers and all they need to do is go along with the plan, that they’ve come to believe that their parenting is much less important and relevant than it actually is.
  
  I agree, a frightening number of kids today are unpleasant to be around. This is something I’ll be writing more about soon in answer to the recent question about unschooling. But parents are going to need a whole different mindset about their roles to solve the problem, and I don’t see the societal support for that happening anytime soon.
  
  Reply
December 8, 2009

Dina

Is there any concrete advice you could give me on how to become more patient? I have been working on this and I am getting better, but I am not where I want to be yet.
I love my children and actually like being with them (an answer that doesn’t win me many friends when asked why they are not in “school”) I know I would miss them so much if they were in school.
great post!

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1. December 8, 2009
  
  Avivah
  
  Dina, I’m not yet where I want to be either! I think that working on loving and accepting ourselves goes a long way in becoming the people we want to be, much further than beating ourselves up for how much more there is we could do. So my concrete advice that probably seems indirect is to practice self acceptance as much as you can. The more patient you are with yourself, the easier it becomes to be patient with your children.
  
  Reply
December 8, 2009

Yehudis

So refreshing to read your blog, Avivah. I get similar comments too. Except I have much less kids.

I recently saw an advertisement for a Sunday program for girls which was descrbing how peaceful your Sundays are about to become as soon as you send your girls there. And it’s directed to mothers whose kids are in school all day the rest of the week. Very disturbing.

I happen to be the kind of person who needs time away from the children, to do my own things and get my intellectual stimulation. I’ve been managing to find this time while homeschooling. So I understand mothers’ need for a break. But to what extent? A break, by definition, cannot last most of the time.

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1. December 9, 2009
  
  Avivah
  
  I also understand the need for a break – I think all mothers do! Very few of us don’t need some kind of down time, self-time, intellectual/emotional/social recharging. But too often the answer to not enjoying your kids seems to be to see less of them, which only exacerbates the problem!
  
  Reply
  1. December 10, 2009
    
    doubleg
    
    I can think of other things I could do now, after the fact, but yes, I would get a bit burnt out with kids 24/7.
    My husband, who absolutely loved being with them and doing things with them and is a natural teacher used to do projects with them, climb hills, go for walks and bike rides. I would use those times to just “veg”, and read a book which was my escape.
    Even when we traveled, we didn’t do the stress thing. We got a travel van and later a trailer. On those long trips, I would gaze out the window, read, listen to music, etc. while the others did the same.
    I didn’t make myself dependent on my female friends for my break, or get involved in gyms etc. I had a lot of exercise as it was. (We gardened too-together) I wonder if I would have done those things if it would have tended to make me more restless? I saw it in other women. Comparing their circumstances with each other always resulted in no good one way or another. Sure I had female friends. I now see that I may have spent too much time on the phone. That’s one thing I regret. I can now visualize/recall myself brushing off the kids and getting impatient if they interrupted me, and it’s not a pretty memory. Who ELSE should I have been most concerned with besides my own children who were given especially to ME to raise and nurture? I should have limited those call times to when my husband had them under his wing so I didn’t get annoyed at their interruptions and they didn’t feel insignificant. If I had been out of the house at a regular job I sure wouldn’t have dared to take/steal my employer’s time to talk to friends. I would have had to plan other times. I sure didn’t encourage the children to spend a lot of time on the phone with friends. When they did, it always resulted in problems. Again, comparing circumstances – no good.
    
    Reply
December 9, 2009

Orthonomics

Just to let you know, I posted a link since the posts are so closely related.

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1. December 9, 2009
  
  Avivah
  
  Thanks for the link and for letting me know. 🙂
  
  Reply
December 9, 2009

julie

when i took my girls out of school, i noticed a HUGE different in how good our relationship became. i think people overlook that when kids are in school, parents always see them at their worst- tired and rushed in the morning, exhausted and overburdened in the evenings. and we are expected to be the police to get them to do even more school-mandated stuff- endless repetition of material they already know, tons of boring busy work, etc etc. so, of course there is tension, and of course parents are stressed out. it is ironic that it wasn’t until i started spending MORE time with my kids that i really started to enjoy them. a lot. i wish other parents could have a piece of that…

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1. December 10, 2009
  
  doubleg
  
  I posted something along these lines in the thread “Older Boys and Homeschooling”. The reason for that endless repetition must be because the teachers are trying to cover the material enough so at least most of the students “get it”. Some don’t get it very quickly, if at all, and some got it so well the first time that they are crazy from it.
  As for regular academic subjects, I made sure I got books to address this. Math for instance: My course started at 0 and worked right up through high school levels. Each chapter started with a diagnostic test with a code number next to every question. The chapter contained teaching sections that covered every code number so when they got an answer wrong, they went to that section and learned it. When they got it right, they could skip that section for the time being. At the end of the chapter, there was a check-up test with the same coded numbers. If they got an answer wrong, they went back to that coded section and reviewed. If they got it right, fine. Next chapter, same thing. The knowledge built and built, always double-checking that it was actually learned and reinforced. Some repetition in tests for check-up, but they could go at their own pace. No one even THOUGHT of feeling inferior or looking down on someone else. They were just doing what they needed to do at that time and helping others who were learning what they already knew.
  The same with English subjects. It was an amazing course. We did things like History, Geography, Sciences, Health, etc. etc. together no matter the age. When the younger ones reached their attention span or comprehension limit, they were assigned simple projects to reinforce what they learned, while the older ones continued deeper with projects that had much more challenge. The older were required to help the younger – which helped them to review and reinforce it in their minds and develop patience and compassion for their siblings. The younger were hearing and absorbing a little of what the older were learning by osmosis, so when the time came for them to take that level, they were already a little acquainted with what they were about to deal with.
  We looked at the world as Creation Studies with each racial and geographical area as a part of Creation and the people as people with unique needs and abilities, etc. Good for Kiruv understanding.
  Health was “The House You Live In” (your body) with the analogy based on an actual building – roof, shingles, windows, heat, cooling, kitchen, etc. etc. All tied in with Creation.
  Sciences were explored within the framework of the days of Creation. Easy to make it simple, as well as relate to the Parsha. Easy to deepen it as far as you wanted to go and their interest dictated.
  Reading was from Bereishit and Tehillim, not “Dick and Jane” or whoever. (An example of my own sad public education, and since I didn’t send my kids to a “regular” school, I don’t even know who the children are in the readers now – public or religious school.) Sentence structure, language study, memory work, songs, spelling, handwriting…printing, cursive, calligraphy, typing… performances and displays, all based on the Tanach.
  
  We had read studies that showed that all-day learning was too exhausting to the mind and bad for the eyes so was counter-productive. We didn’t want burn-out, so we ended the academic portion in mid afternoon and did practical togetherness learning experiences in the afternoons. This was so true. They zoomed through their academic work with relish, had their break with practical learning and nature and were raring to go. They all finished the required high school work and well beyond by 16.
  So- the practical component: They were all responsible for chores on a regular rotation. We never had house help. Instead, they learned how to keep things orderly so they didn’t have so much work to clean it up. They learned that no matter where they ended up in life, they needed to know how to take care of themselves, even if that just meant knowing how to direct an employee effectively. They were not enslaved. They got “paid” for their chores and taught how to budget the money. With that, they paid for their own music lessons and dental work, clothes and shoes, etc. Rather than just dole it out in a never-ending stream, we funneled it through them especially so they could experience the reality of living expenses. They were also required to learn tzedakah, both with money and deeds. They had TONS of fun. We did a lot of amazing things together as a family, travel, skiing, skating, music…
  As they finished the required academic subjects, they were encouraged to get into self-directed learning. I have classically trained musicians/teachers, a photographer, a silversmith, etc. and one who is working on a biology degree.
  I wish education was patterned this way – meeting the need of the individual. We had such amazing adventures and I learned so much myself – HOW could I ever be bored – they sure weren’t! Conflict? Some is normal, but they were so well-rounded, confident in themselves and interesting to be around and were proud of each other that there was very little sibling friction and no inferiority complexes.
  No, it wasn’t Utopia. But we just did the best we could and enjoyed the journey. Wish I could do it again. I’d do it better.
  
  Reply
December 9, 2009

Chana

Avivah, could you share how you manage to take downtime/selftime/recharging time for yourself?

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1. December 9, 2009
  
  Avivah
  
  Yes, Chana, I’ll be happy to, but there are a number of other questions that I have to get to first. 🙂
  
  Reply
December 10, 2009

Avivah

Doubleg, welcome! You made a number of wonderful points – thank you for sharing!

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December 11, 2009

Malkie

It used to be that the #1 question I would get as an hs mom was “but what about socialization?”. Not anymore. Now it’s “how can you stand it?”. I tell people that when you are used to being together, you figure out how to do it well (today “well” involves making truffles, yum!). It’s not that great an answer, but it seems to satisfy the muggles.

Oh… and my children are born good. It just takes some work to help them make the choices that keep them that way. 🙂

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1. December 11, 2009
  
  Avivah
  
  LOL, Malkie, love your perspective on kids being born good! So true! (Truffles?? Yum, yum, sounds delish!)
  
  The shift in the questions people are asking is very telling, isn’t it?
  
  Reply
  1. December 11, 2009
    
    Sara
    
    Now that you mentioned it, I also find I’m getting the same shift in questions (and my kids are still young).
    
    Truffles…yummmm
    
    On a side note, do you have an easy way to make truffles with kids? I really have to get my kids more in the kitchen so any ideas (from anyone) are welcome.
    
    Reply
December 11, 2009

Sara

I will try to limit the venting.

Thank you for addressing this topic. I always disliked getting these comments from others and I see I’m not the only one. I found it so shocking that people with more than 5 kids could be surprised that I handled 2 all day last year. The days between camp and school were so stressful for so many parents. The big talk on the playground was what they were going to do with their kids all day (that relates to the topic of kids getting bored because they’re not used to their own time).

On a practical note: Often these comments are made in front of my own kids (as they’re often with me), sometimes even in front of the other mothers’ kids (insert horror smilie). Any good responses or things to say when the kids are listening?

There, I limited my vent.

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1. December 11, 2009
  
  Avivah
  
  My response is, “They’re great kids and I love spending time with them.” My kids see the questions as a reflection of the adult asking, not a reflection on them. The real problem is when the children of the person asking is there, as this isn’t exactly a subtle message to kids about how they’re viewed.
  
  Reply
December 31, 2009

Malkie

Sara,sorry I didn’t get back to you on your truffle recipe request sooner, but I gave birth the day after I posted my comment. I’m just catching up now. 🙂

Here’s a link to easy truffles: http://www.recipezaar.com/Easy-Decadent-Truffles-148569

There are some healthy ones on that site, too. My kids are 12, 7, and 5 (and almost 3 weeks, wow!) and they really enjoy getting in touch with their food.

Here’s a healthy truffle recipe, but I don’t have proportions: combine a lot of tehina (not the flavored stuff, you want the concentrate) with a little silan (date honey) to taste. Mix really well. Roll into balls, roll in carob powder if you want. We make this all the time, but we keep it in spreadable form. the kids eat it instead of peanut butter. I cannot make enough, it gets eaten so fast!

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March 1, 2010

Needing time for self « OCEANS OF JOY

[…] written about how can I stand to be around my kids all day, and I think part of the answer is that there are somethings you just can’t understand until […]

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