My daughter had an appointment with a specialist recently. This doctor is lovely. Truly one of the best physicians I’ve ever had to deal with. She is intelligent, patient, understanding, funny, great with my 3 year old, gentle, encouraging, non-condescending. She has a lot of letters after her name. I won’t even try to understand what they all mean, other than a lot of schooling and a lot of expertise. Along with all of that comes the pay-check, the lifestyle, the wardrobe, the respect, and the pride that accompanies such a career achievement. She is living the dream!
Except…
Once when my daughter was in to see her, this doctor asked me how many children I had. I told her we had seven. She asked if I worked out side of the home. I said no. And that we homeschool. And then she said something I will never forget.
“We are all jealous of you, you know that?”
“Pardon me? Who is? Jealous of me?”
“All of us women who bought the lie that we could invest in our education, and build our careers first, and still have children later and have it all. It was a lie.”
“Oh.”
“I have my education. I have my career. And now I have two wonderful children, but I’m still missing out,” she said. “I am here all the time and they are at day care from early, early ages and then school and I am still missing out on so much. You are so lucky.”
Now, before you take this wrongly and think I am about to launch into a “And that’s why I’m better than she is because I stay home with my kids” soap box rant, think again. Clearly, I stay home with my children, and I am so fortunate and so grateful that that has been an option for our family. However, this is not a rant about working women. I love having a female family doctor, and a female optometrist, and a slew of female midwives (clearly!) so I would be a hypocrite to then say that all women should forever, always, stay home and never work outside the home. That is not the point of this article.
Here is my point: This doctor is looking at me and assuming that because I am home with my kiddos every day, every waking minute of most days, that I am not missing out on anything. That I am there for them, all the time; investing in them like she wants to be for her kids; being the perfectly engaged and engaging mom; experiencing and enjoying every moment with them with out fail.
That’s not reality. Can I get an amen?
Please tell me that I’m not the only one here who will admit that just being in the house with my children all day, everyday does not instantly make me a great mom. Who else will admit with me that many, many opportunities to build in to my children go by every day that I miss and waste because I’m too absorbed in my own selfishness, laziness, distractedness? How much am I missing, even though I’m in a better position to really soak it all in?
I know, I know, my being here at home with them, teaching them gives me an advantage of time and proximity that certainly helps in “getting it right” with my kids, but I still miss out so many times. At a homeschool conference I once attended, the speaker said she didn’t cry when her daughter married and moved out because she didn’t feel like she had wasted their years together at home. She felt like she spent her years well with her daughter, teaching her and loving her, and communicating to her all she needed to know before she moved out. She was at peace with her moving out, knowing that their mother-daughter relationship had been so well built over their years of being home together.
Can I say that? Do I feel like I’m making the most of my days with the kids? Do I see today and tomorrow and the next day as chances to invest in these wonderful little people or do I see them as 72 hours to survive before the weekend?
Here is the challenge for those of us staying at home: being intentional about using these days wisely. There are women who would LOVE to stay at home if they could but their circumstances dictate otherwise presently. We are blessed to have the option of being home: let’s not waste this gift by not making the most of our time with our children. Not just being with them and caring for their basic physical and educational needs, but really enjoying them, getting to know them, preparing them for their future.
What can you do today to change how you view the joy and the responsibility of being at home with your children? What can you do today to thoroughly drink up all the rich blessings of enjoying being with them?
Barbara and her husband, as they homeschool their 7 children, are finding out that no two children are alike! Between lessons and lunches, Barbara blogs at Fuel by Barbara.
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