I wrote this about four years ago and published it on Medium. A friend and I were talking about parenting recently and she mentioned that this is something she’s working on. I remembered this piece, and I thought I’d share it here.
Anyone who’s been a primary caretaker of young children knows about the constant-ness. So many (valid) needs. So many (questionably valid) requests.
Relentless is a good word to describe it.
I have a 2.5-year-old and a 4-year-old. When beckoned, I’ve learned my natural tendency is to drop whatever I’m doing immediately to tend to them: get them something, answer their question, help them. Why? First, I believe in respecting children, and I want them to know that their needs and ideas and thoughts are important to me. The other (and probably bigger) reason is this: that’s how my own mother did it. A stay-at-home mom on the farm, she was there for whoever needed her at the drop of a hat. (To this day, my dad will stick his head in the door and yell for her, and my mom will be there in less than 30 seconds. Part of this is farm life; part of it… is not.)
The relentless needs and requests—often interrupting something else I’m trying to attend to—is one of the absolute hardest things for me in this season. I know it sounds trite, but I think it’s difficult to understand the toll it takes unless you’ve been there (and I’m convinced it’s the main reason for #mombrain). However, mindfulness has taught me to observe myself and remember I always have more choices than I think.
So I’ve started doing something new: making them wait.
Now when they need me, I don’t just jump up. Sometimes I take a breath. And then I usually tell them, in one way or another, that I’ll get what they’re needing as soon as I can.
I always appreciate specificity, and the language we use with young children matters, so I’ll share the three most common phrases I use. They are:
“Just a minute!”
“Yes I can, as soon as ________.”
“Yep! I’m gonna finish _____ and then I’ll _____.”
If they ask again before I come, it’s “Oh remember, I asked you to wait. Please wait.” or “Can you be patient?”
It seems simple. (Doesn’t everything once you’ve gotten there?) And in fairness, it is, but the simplest things are sometimes the hardest to carry out in day-to-day life.
Aaaand it turns out I can’t even write a quick post about this topic without it happening. My kids are playing with stickers in my office at the moment, and just as I was typing that last paragraph, my four-year-old yelled to me “Mom, what does this say?” When I didn’t reply immediately (‘cuz at some point I guess those little voices get tuned out), she tried again: “Mom! What does this say?!” I took a breath and said, “Just a minute. I’m finishing writing a sentence on my computer, then I’ll help you.”
(Parenting offers us many opportunities to demonstrate our integrity, doesn’t it?)
I’ve taken to using Glennon Doyle’s “hard things” language, both in this and other areas. “It’s hard to wait, I know. But you can do hard things.” They’ve started telling me, “Mom! I did a hard thing!” and it’s… so cute.
I’m extremely committed to this new habit of making my kids wait, because it’s meaningful to me for a number of reasons.
Because my needs and interests and preferences matter too, FOR THE LOVE. Mothers are not meant to be martyrs. Yes, there is some sacrifice involved. But like many things, it often swings too far in one direction. Mothers are people, as it turns out, not servants beholden to the whims of those around them. The practical results are life-giving: not only do I get to finish more tasks, but my brain feels less scattered. I also feel more self-respect when I set and hold these small boundaries around my time and attention.
Because I’m extremely impatient. It’s true. I recently realized that my impatience probably, like so many things, has roots in my childhood. My mom dropped whatever she was doing immediately whenever someone else needed something. As a result, I never learned to wait, and to this day, I’m incredibly impatient. I don’t want that for my kids.
Because I’m raising daughters who will probably be mothers someday. As illustrated here, we tend to parent the way we were parented, unless we bring intentionality to the table. As I’m learning to parent, it helps me so much to remember that I’m setting an example for my girls. In making them wait, in sending the consistent message that “your needs are important, but so are mine,” I hope they’ll be empowered to hold the same boundaries when they become mothers themselves.
In her book The Conscious Parent, author Shefali Tsabary writes, “To shift to a more effective way of relating to our children, we must be willing to face and resolve issues in ourselves that stem from the way we were parented.” This mothering gig isn’t for the faint of heart, and doing it consciously is a whole other level. But I think it’s worth it. This is one tiny change I’ve made from the way I was parented. It has transformed my days, and knowing it’s good for my kids too makes it that much better.
YES. I haven't been very good with boundaries in my own life and asking them to wait, yes wait, wait again...while I finish something has been really helpful FOR ME to learn this and keep an eye on rising resentment. I also try to respect them when I ask them to do something by letting them finish whatever they are doing (within a reasonable time frame).
YES. This is huge and something I’ve been learning since becoming a mom of a toddler (4ish years ago). My mom was similarly boundary-less when it came to doing what we wanted when I was a kid (especially at the dinner table—I don’t remember here sitting still for more than 5 min), and I don’t want to do the same. It’s good for me, and good for them as you said. I’m also attentive to really following through with what I say—if I tell them I’ll get to it in 5 minutes, I really try to do that. I find they they’re much more cooperative when I ask them to do something (esp my 6 year old) when they’ve seen me follow through on my promises to them.