Friday, December 16, 2005
My dear husband to the rescue
I married one of the kindest, most understanding, and reasonable men around. The love I feel for him just gets stronger and stronger everyday, especially when I see what a wonderful father he's become. He has so much patience and simply adores our son. The beautiful thing is that he always wants to spend time with Aiden and help me out as much as he can. I really appreciate his support and couldn't ever do this without him.

Enough of that sap. Right? lol

My DH wrote a wonderful message to my crazy, insane mother last night. I think it is well thought out and right to the point. I can only hope that she takes what was said to heart and adapts her behavior.

Here it is:


Elaine,
These are my views on the subject of different stages of motherhood. I wrote this because I thought it would help all of us understand the situation. Please do not view this as an attack on anyone. It is simply some insight that I have gained from my own observations, experiences and mothering from my parents. Stephanie loves you, as do we all here at the Spelman household.
We value your caring and love. We don't always view the world the same, but as adults we respect each others differences. If we didn't have these differences the world would be pretty boring.
The first paragraph in your email highlights the root of the problem.
Stephanie is not looking for you to stop caring for her. She is looking for you to mature into the mother of an adult. A mother will always be "motherly". However, the role of mothering changes as your children grow.
Right now Stephanie is experiencing the first stages of motherhood. Aiden needs lots of help and assistance in helping to gain his basic skills to build from for the rest of his life. Pretty soon he will learn these things and will need less guiding from us as parents. Such as picking up food and putting it in his mouth. Right now he needs us to show, assist, and guide him on eating. When he gets older he will have learned this and won't need our help. This is an example of "mothering" in its early stages. If we tried to show, assist, and guide him on this same thing (how to eat) when he is 7 years old; I'm sure he would be pretty annoyed and confused. It would also make him feel like we don’t have confidence in his ability to feed himself.
However, if he is eating his food without utensils (like a dog or cat would) then we would guide him and show him the correct way to eat again. Hopefully, he gets a hang of it before moving out to be on his own.
This is where the next stage of motherhood begins. As parents you do to the best of your abilities and situation to prepare your child for the world. (I kind of view it like NASA sending off its astronauts into space; they work as hard as they can to provide their astronauts with all the tools and training before they blast off into space.) After a child moves away from home (blasts off like a rocket) they are starting their own journey into adulthood (space). Motherhood takes on a new role when a child begins life on their own.
Mothers will worry about their "baby" facing the world. Then a child will begin to put the mothers' worries to rest by living and learning using the tools their parents provided them as an adolescent. One of these tools is the child's (now young adult) ability to make their own decisions. Hopefully most of these decisions will be the "correct" decisions. But there will definitely be some wrong decisions made along the way, and that’s called learning the hard way. This phase usually took place from late teens to early twenties for myself. During this phase of motherhood moms will give their input from time to time, but learn to back off and let the child become a full fledged self guided adult who seeks guidance when needed.
At this stage unsolicited guidance on how to make life decisions would be taken the same way a 7 year old would take being shown how to eat. (annoyed, confused, lack of confidence).
There is still room for helpful advice here. However there is a difference between helpful advice and "your way is wrong, my way is right" advice. This is hard to juggle for an adult sometimes because an adult has more experience in years and situations so feels that they must be right. This is inevitable and can be seen in all adults as stubbornness as we get older. I know this because I can see my own stubbornness settling in and I only just turned 30! Hopefully I can continue to objectively see myself and recognize these kind of things as I get older.
Then comes the next stage in motherhood. Mother of an adult who has created their own life, mother of a bride, mother of a wife, and mother of another mother. This is also known as grandmother. You have raised a child who has become an adult and begun their own family. At this point they are your equal in the sense of being an adult. Guidance no longer comes into play. Mothering that was provided to an adolescent is no longer required. The child is now another adult whom you have an adult relationship with just like you would with one of your friends or peers. In addition to that you also have the pride of being the person who had mothered that adult who has now grown into their very unique self. At this stage of motherhood it would be very out of place to guide them how to eat as you would an infant. Just as it would be to tell someone, of age, how to make the right decision on parenting. There is still room for advice here also, but again there is a difference between helpful advice and "you're wrong, I'm right" advice. Another tricky part of advice is based on past advice given to an individual. Your history of advise will dictate how advise is perceived when given in the future.
Grandmotherhood is when you enjoy the good of children and don't have the responsibility to raise them or discipline them. In the same instance you must learn the parent's expectations of their child and help them in their expectations and wishes for that child, not instilling your own wishes. Your own wishes will translate through to your grandchild via the way you raised your own child. If different decisions are made they are to be respected just as if any other adult makes different decisions from each other.

Elaine,
These are my views on the subject of different stages of motherhood. I wrote this because I thought it would help all of us understand the situation. Please do not view this as an attack on anyone. It is simply some insight that I have gained from my own observations, experiences and mothering from my parents. Stephanie loves you, as do we all here at the Spelman household.
We value your caring and love. We don't always view the world the same, but as adults we respect each others differences. If we didn't have these differences the world would be pretty boring.
Here is a cute picture of your grandson, and our son...



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