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Mother’s Day Reflections

May 14, 2012 By

A few things that were sent to me for Mother’s Day. First, to take you back in a time machine, here’s a clip from The Cosby Show at its best. It was shown at an event I spoke at on Saturday night, and as soon as I got home I showed it to my family. It’s awfully funny:

And now for something completely different.

Do you know what a fistula is? It’s an endemic health problem women face across the Third World, and it happens because of lack of obstetrical care. Basically, when you’re in labour, you get a bad tear on your vagina which goes all the way through to your urethra or even your anus. And because of that tear, fluids (and other things) can start coming out of your vagina and you have no control over it. So you become a pariah to your community, because you stink, and it’s often assumed that God cursed you.

The problem is far worse among the very young moms, whose bodies just aren’t ready for labour.

Here’s a story of a 13-year-old who was raped, and faced labour alone for three days until she delivered a stillborn baby. And she had a huge fistula.

Mahabouba smelled foul, and villagers thought she had been cursed by God. They put her in a hut at the edge of the village and took off the door — so the hyenas would get her that night.

When the hyenas came, Mahabouba used a stick to fend them off. The next morning she set off crawling to get to an American missionary who lived more than 30 miles away. The missionary took her to the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, where she met Steven Arrowsmith, an American urologist from Grand Rapids, Mich.

It’s the story of Christian missionary doctors who have gone to Africa to help treat this horrible problem–and surgery can fix it.

The story focused on Steven Arrowsmith, but I have a friend doing a similar thing in Uganda, Jean Froese, and she’s started a charity called Save the Mothers, which helps women suffering from pregnancy-related problems. If you’re feeling especially grateful this Mother’s Day, it would be wonderful to spread some of that gratitude to other mothers who don’t have what we do.

I have had difficult labours. I simply cannot imagine going through labour alone, as a teenage girl. And yet millions upon millions of women do that every year. We are so, so blessed, even those of us who are going through relationship difficulties. And reading that article reminded me of it once again, and so I thought I would share it with you.

I hope you had a wonderful day yesterday with your families. I certainly did, and I am grateful once again for all God has given me.

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Filed Under: giving, mothering Tagged With: , 6 Comments

Mothering on a Weak Stomach

May 11, 2012 By
'Tickled Pink' photo (c) 2011, Stuart Richards - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/

Every Friday my column appears in a number of newspapers around the country. This week’s actually is a shortened version of Monday’s blog post on parenting, so I thought that I’d run a Mother’s Day column from a few years ago instead in this space!

I have often marvelled at the fact that my youngest daughter is so healthy. At first I chalked it up to homeschooling, since we shelter her from germ factories. But thanks to Austrian lung specialist Dr. Friedrich Bischinger, I now have the real answer. It turns out that picking your nose and eating it boosts the immunity.

This is one of those things that, as a parent, you would rather not know. And as I was pondering this piece of research, a few questions occurred to me. Does Bischinger have nothing better to do with his time than worry about nose picking? Perhaps he should come do a shift or two at Canadian hospitals and fill in for some of the overworked internists here.

Even more importantly, how does one measure this particular experiment? You have to compare the pick-and-swallow kids with something. Do you arrange for a group of pick-and-stick-it-on-the-side-of-Grandma’s-couch? Or a group of non-pickers? In our family the question may be moot anyway because we have actually cured my youngest of this habit, at least in public. According to Bischinger, of course, we should just let her rip. Somehow I just don’t think I can find the stomach for it.

Stomach fortitude, though, is something I have discovered in a whole new way since becoming a mom. Grown women venture out with other grown women, only to find the conversation turning to the consistency of toddlers’ fecal matter. Two or three years earlier many of us wouldn’t even admit we had fecal matter. Kids, of course, don’t share our squeamishness. They know body functions are taboo, but these still cause gales of laughter. They are the source of the most outrageous insults and humour they can imagine. (Typical joke told by a four-year-old: “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Fart!”, followed by everyone collapsing on the floor laughing). Recently, when our family was considering renting a particular movie, I refused since it had swearing in it. Rebecca, our oldest, leaned over to her younger sister and whispered, “that means it has bum words.”

The odd thing is that children have no concept of what actually is distasteful. They think nothing of barging in to the bathroom at that particular moment when you really want privacy, but should they see you and your spouse kissing, well, the screams you hear are enough to think we had been the ones nose-picking.

Meal times are perhaps the worst for these expressions of disgust. I actually enjoy cooking, but my meals usually have vegetables and meat—I know this will be hard to believe—mixed together. This is a major faux pas in my children’s eyes, and worthy of several choruses of “eeeewwwws!”. If everything is not confined to its own hemispheres on the plate, it’s not worthy. And don’t even get me started on sauces.

Yet I am not the only source of squeamish stomachs in our family. My daughters cause plenty of nausea, too. One of them, who has never met a sauce she likes, thinks nothing of picking up the gum she stuck on her dresser before dinner to finish it afterwards (we’re working on curing her of that, too). And why is it so hard to get kids to remember to flush the toilet?

It seems that motherhood is an inauguration into new challenges for the stomach-challenged, which is probably why it begins as it does. When I was pregnant with Rebecca the only thing I thought of, for the first five months, was food. I dreamed about food. I daydreamed about food. The only thing I didn’t do was eat food. I was so nauseous that every waking minute was dedicated to trying to picture some food that would stay down—an apple? A hard boiled egg? Definitely nothing with sauce.

One day I will have the bathroom to myself, I will be able to kiss my husband whenever I want, eat whatever I want, and ignore the consistency of everybody’s toilet habits. I think I’ll miss these days. And that’s why I still cherish the mushy kisses and mushy cereal I’m presented with every Mother’s Day morning. I hope you all had a wonderful day Sunday, too.

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Filed Under: columns, family life, family meals, mothering, parenting 5 Comments

Two Approaches to Parenting: The Soft Landing vs. the Aim for the Sky

May 6, 2012 By
'rock climbing is fun!' photo (c) 2009, Maria Ly - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Do you expect your kids to fall, or do you expect them to climb?

Those really are the two expectations of parenting: the parents who think that their kids will fall, so it’s their job to provide the soft landing. And then there are parents who think their kids will climb, so it’s their job to provide the ropes and the harness. Both keep kids safe. But one aims at helping them climb; the other aims at assuming they’ll fall.

I’ve always been a climber type of gal. I expect that my kids will do the right thing. I thought all Christian parents did this, but I was speaking with a friend from church recently who said that her attitude towards the teen years is this:

Kids are going to make mistakes and explore. I would rather they do it now, while they’re still under our roof and we’re there to catch them when they fall, than that they wait until they move out and we’re not there to cushion the landing anymore.

I was a little flabbergasted, and I didn’t say very much. But why do we assume that kids will mess up? Sure teens have a lot of pressure, and a lot of issues, but so do adults. And teens have the Holy Spirit just as much as adults do, when they love the Lord. My attitude has always been: I expect you to do what God says is right. I know you’re not perfect, but I expect you to try to listen to God. I’ll love you no matter what, but I expect that we will all, as a family, try to live for Jesus.

Is that so weird?

Apparently it is. I was reading a story lately that epitomized this from Lifesite News, that featured a Planned Parenthood spokesperson saying that American families would be healthier if parents let kids have sex at home. She says:

Dr. Schalet, an assistant sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said American parents should be more like their counterparts in the Netherlands, who allow teenagers to have sex openly under their roof.

Schalet told local media she finds it unfortunate that America, girls believe “in their parents’ eyes they would be a disappointment if they were to engage in sex.”

“In the Netherlands if a girl is in a relationship, she’s not a slut for wanting sex, for making decisions about sex,” she said. Most parents deem teen sexuality a “part of your life that you are allowed to own and make choices about.”

Get that? Our lives would be better if we let kids have sex at home! That’s not all that different from the attitude I’ve also encountered from some parents at church who let their teens drink at home, and serve alcohol to other teens visiting, “so that they won’t drink outside the house”. They’d rather the kids drink where they’re safe. Why not just expect kids not to drink at all?

You’re setting the expectations: I expect you to make poor decisions. I expect you to mess up.

Am I being naive? I don’t think so. I didn’t drink. I didn’t have sex before I was married. In fact, 40% of Christians in my surveys for The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex didn’t have sex before they were married, either. I know that’s not a majority, but it’s a substantial minority. And I think the figures would be higher if parents expected more of their kids.

My children have always come to me when they mess up. We talk all the time–taking walks and talking and chatting at least an hour a day. I keep up with them. They know they can talk to me. But they also know that I expect them to do the right thing. And lo and behold, they do!

I don’t know why Christian parents would give in to defeatism and assume that their kids will choose the wrong path. When we assume that they’ll fall, they often do. If we give the message: we expect you to do the right thing, they often live up to that.

And here’s one of the scary parts that I’ve never understood about parents who let their kids have “sleepovers” at home or to want to get drunk. They now have nowhere safe. If even their parents think they’re going to have sex, how can they say no? Your home is supposed to be the one place in the world where you can still be a child and still be protected. But if your parents are saying, “you can have sex here”, then your parents aren’t protecting you. If your parents are saying, “you can get drunk here”, then your parents aren’t providing a safe environment for you to grow up in.

We owe it to our kids to expect the best, and to provide that safe environment. Jesus’ message was, “go and sin no more”. Did that mean that He wouldn’t forgive them if they messed up? Of course not. But it did mean that He expected them to choose well. And we should expect the same of our kids.

Kids live up to their expectations. I want to raise mountain climbers, not people who fall. What about you?

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Filed Under: adolescence, parenting, teenagers 21 Comments
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