There was this article floating about social media this week titled ’32 Ways to Savor Your Children While You Have Them’. I clicked on it despite dreading what I thought would be a cliché, saccharine-sweet cringe-worthy article on parenting. (Can you tell that after Christmas holidays, Chinese New Year then a bout of illnesses I might be ready for a Mommy-break?).
To my surprise though, it actually had some rather (non-saccharine) sweet points, the overall point being how not to get caught up in the ‘doing’ of motherhood instead of the ‘being’.
So okay, yes, it was cliché, and some stuff I totally didn’t get as my brain doesn’t work this way like ‘Prop your phone camera up and use the time lapse feature to record a family meal or homework session. Looking at it later will help you appreciate the beautiful chaos of raising children’. (The what feature? Beautiful what? Our priority at mealtime is ensuring food is transported to mouths and not other areas of the house. Record this? Pfftt).
I also couldn’t read other things without half-gagging or feeling severely dysfunctional like:- brushing my children’s hair till they are teenagers and making sure I use a wet brush to ensure quality time. Well my two-nager won’t let me near her with any sort of brush or hair grooming paraphernalia. (Hence she now sports the local ‘bowl cut’ -yes I know she will hate me later but I chose her vision over fashion, and it has saved us both hours of hair-raising battles).
Hairy episodes aside, the article actually came at a moment when I needed it given two of the 32 things made me stop in my tracks. The first was “Read the heartfelt things your kids write about you and let them sink in”.
My 7-year-old is always making little notes, cards and things that I’m guilty of leaving around the house after I’ve smiled in appreciation for receiving them. After a week I think about how to dispose of the multitude of paper without hurting her feelings. Yes, I know, I know, I definitely missed the point on that one as there are mums who scan every single work of art/note and categorise them according to age. Really.
The second was ‘This is my motherhood, I only get to do it once’. Well that gave me a giant kick up my equally giant mommy pants as just that afternoon, I had been on my phone, making playdates, household arrangements and ordering food (nothing to be inordinately guilty about as they were all things for the benefit of my children).
Whilst I was doing this however, my just-turned- two-year-old tried to show me something she liked in a book she had. ‘Yook’ she said, her cute little nose pressed up against the back of the book as she displayed the page she wanted me to look at ‘Yook!’ Her fat fingers pointed at the picture. I’d grinned, acknowledged it and gone back to texting, vaguely wondering when she’d learnt to (sort of) say “Look” and associate it with the action (in English). How could I go back to texting? That magical moment happened, it was so darned cute, and it was now forever gone. I was appalled at myself.
So saccharine or not, the article brought home a point for me. I won’t click on the further links it had to ‘Mindful Parenting’ (heck I’m still getting over the wet hairbrushing), but I’m definitely going to learn to savour the sweet more. Especially when all I have to do sometimes is to just stop, and ‘Yook!’.
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