Sharing tips

Share tips: Do you have a secret to get your child to go to bed easily? Do you have a fun way to entertain your children while you cook dinner or clean? What do you do to distract your whiny toddler? All moms have secret tips to the trade. We’re all strong in some mommy areas and weak in others. Sharing tips with each other is helpful in several ways. First, moms benefit from tips that often help make mommyhood less stressful, easier, and/or more fun. Second, moms feel a sense of satisfaction from being useful and helpful to each other. Sharing tips also helps in building relationships and decreasing the isolation that moms often feel. Not feeling alone in an issue, or in mommyhood in general, goes a long way to being healthy and balanced.

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Are you reading my blog? Let me know. Even if you don't have a specific comment for a specific post, leave a comment just to say "Hi" and that you're here. Also, don't forget to share it with all of your mommy friends. The more feedback the better. Thanks for reading!!!

Sharing child care

Share child care: This has been one of the most beneficial, mutually helpful parts of my mommy girlfriend relationships. Whether you’re a stay-at-home mom or work-away-from-home mom, you know the importance of getting to do things by yourself. Whether it’s running to the grocery store, having an uninterrupted two hours to clean, or just a desire for quiet and rest, having a friend to share child care with is priceless. This is a relationship that doesn’t involve finances and doesn’t involve score-keeping. It needs to be a balanced relationship, with each person giving and accepting responsibilities. A friend of mine and I have done this for years. One of us has a doctor’s appointment and the other watches her child (or children.) The other has a meeting, the first returns the favor. We have even begun sharing doctor’s appointments. We go together (either for ourselves or for the children) and take turns. We run errands together and for each other. It makes life less complicated and less exhausting. You actually have an adult to talk to on the drive, you’re saving gas, and the children are entertained. A trip to the grocery store without children or with another adult just isn’t as energy-draining. You can even exchange child care for date nights with your husband, something we’ll discuss in more detail later. Sharing child care, when done in a balanced and healthy way, benefits everyone involved, including the children.

Sharing chores

Share chores: This doesn’t mean that you ask your girlfriend to come over and help you dust and fold laundry (although some moms are able to work out an exchange program.) It means that your house doesn’t have to be spic and span before you have company. And it’s okay to be washing dishes, straightening up, or folding clothes while hanging with your girlfriend. I have found that we moms tend to feel like our house has to look perfect before anyone comes over. I’m not really sure how this got started, but I’m sure that women of ancient times worked together in chores (as a matter of fact, the small amount of sociological study I’ve done shows that in most cultures women did work together in chores – of gathering food, child care, and maintaining homes. Even the wealthy had more than one maid.) And because so many of us feel that our houses need to be perfect before we have company, the rest of us that visit think, “wow, she’s got it all together. I wonder how she does it.” Only to find out that she is struggling just the same as us. I find it much more comforting to know that I’m not the only mom who trips over toys and hardly ever has the kitchen counter completely cleaned off. And I’m much less stressed about it if my girlfriend doesn’t mind me doing dishes and picking up toys while we visit.

Sharing emotional burdens

What are the practical steps that we can take in joining together in mommyhood?

1. Share emotional burdens: When your stressed out or having difficulty with a parenting issue (or any issue) share it with a girlfriend. We have experience in doing this, we’ve been sharing our lives with our girlfriends since childhood. Often as adults and moms we tend to either bear our stress alone or depend on our husbands or the latest magazine to offer support. Our husbands are very helpful, but they don’t experience parenthood like we do. There are just certain challenges that moms face that our husband don’t understand. It’s not because they don’t care, it’s just that they generally have different responsibilities as a parent and experience parenthood (and life) differently than we do. They have their strengths and can support us in many ways, but there are some aspects of mommyhood that only another mom can truly understand. And magazines are very helpful. They are full of experts and experienced moms, but there is just not the personal touch and understanding that another mom can offer. You can’t bounce things off of a magazine. Sometimes just talking about an issue helps us to resolve it. And I have often been surprised how similar my mommy struggles are to what other moms are going through.

Beginning to Join Together

As we begin to view motherhood as a joint effort instead of an individual endeavor, it will become more of the blessing that it was originally meant to be. So how do we join together in this, the greatest of adventures? Practically speaking, what on a day to day basis can we do? The first part of the answer was covered already. As we take a step back, examine our priorities and obligations, and make changes to become balanced we start the work towards overall health and happiness in motherhood. We begin to be real with ourselves about our expectations and our capabilities. Another important step is to be real with others. I’m convinced that we wouldn’t need so many magazines and books for moms if we would be more real with each other. When I have opened myself up and shown my weaknesses to my mommy friends, the rewards have been great.

A tangent - For a Reason Part 3

What about disease, miscarriages, tragic accidents, etc. that don’t involve another person? These things occur because of the presence of evil in our world, which really boils down to an individual’s choice as well. Romans 5:1 tells us that “… sin entered the world through one man [Adam], and death through sin…” Through the sin of Adam and Eve sin, evil, wickedness, and malevolence entered the world. Satan is real and “prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour´(1 Peter 5:8) and he will use any device he has to bring us down, make us doubt, and distract us from living under God’s love and grace.
Therefore, in the sense that “for a reason” means there is a reason behind bad things happening, there is some truth in the statement. Everything happens either because God causes it or the devil causes it or because of choices that people make. Good can always come out of any situation, but bad things do not happen just so that the good can happen. Bad things happen because sin is a part of the world that we live in. One day we will live in God’s Kingdom where there is no evil, sin, sadness, pain, or sorrow. Until then we are to trust in, rely on, and believe God regardless of our worldly circumstances. We are to realize that painful situations occur because we live in a sinful world, but God will never leave us or forsake us, and if we continue to love Him He can make all things work for our good.