by Jennifer Burden | May 8, 2016 | 2016, International, Mission Motherhood
As part of World Moms Blog’s collaboration with BabyCenter’s Mission Motherhood™, our World Moms are writing posts on maternal health around the world. In today’s post, we are celebrating Mother’s Day by sharing photos and thoughts on the holiday from around the world!
“Mother’s Day is a relatively recent practice in India and takes place the 2nd Sunday in May in India, like in the U.S. For me, as a daughter, it’s about calling up my mother and my mother-in-law and wishing them well. We all chuckle over the fact that earmarking only one day for moms seems so inadequate. As for my son, he usually wishes me a Happy Mother’s Day and ropes his father in to cook something special for me. This is a welcome change for me, as here, in India, we cook fresh meals at least every day, if not thrice a day for every meal!” — Piya Mukherjee, India
Read more stories and photos on Mother’s Day around the world in our post, “How families celebrate Mother’s Day around the world“, over at BabyCenter’s Mission Motherhood™!
And also check out our World Moms Blog Instagram Feed on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 8th, 2016!
Jennifer Burden is the Founder and CEO of World Moms Network, an award winning website on global motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. World Moms Network writes from over 30 countries, has over 70 contributors and was listed by Forbes as one of the “Best 100 Websites for Women”, named a “must read” by The New York Times, and was recommended by The Times of India.
She was also invited to Uganda to view UNICEF’s family health programs with Shot@Life and was previously named a “Global Influencer Fellow” and “Social Media Fellow” by the UN Foundation. Jennifer was invited to the White House twice, including as a nominated "Changemaker" for the State of the World Women Summit. She also participated in the One Campaign’s first AYA Summit on the topic of women and girl empowerment and organized and spoke on an international panel at the World Bank in Washington, DC on the importance of a universal education for all girls. Her writing has been featured by Baby Center, Huffington Post, ONE.org, the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life, and The Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists.” She is currently a candidate in Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in the Executive Masters of Public Affairs program, where she hopes to further her study of global policies affecting women and girls.
Jennifer can be found on Twitter @JenniferBurden.
More Posts - Website
Follow Me:
by ThinkSayBe | May 8, 2016 | 2016, Heartfulness, Inspirational, International, Meditation, Motherhood, North America, Parenting, ThinkSayBe, USA, World Moms Blog, World Motherhood
#Heartfulness Meditation Within Motherhood
Engaging in daily meditation is a thought I have had for many years. Fortunately I finally began practicing it a few months ago through Heartfulness Meditation. I choose the word ‘finally’ carefully because as much as it is true that I have used it in the past, it is also true that I don’t view life as things having ‘finally’ happened. Things like babies growing and learning how to talk or crawl or sleep through the night….. I used to never feel like I wanted them to ‘finally’ happen.
So when I say I finally began the practice of meditation, I really mean it. It is something I would have done well to have started a long time ago.
Within my role of being a parent I feel many emotions. With my 14 year old daughter I get to feel a love that one can only get from a close companion. I am her mother, but we also can hang out as friends. She can share things from her life that I can compare to my own memories from that age. With my 3 year old I get to answer the many questions she has; many of which are repetitive, but come only from a want and need to learn about the world around her. The one and a half year old doesn’t yet talk fully. He says some words and does express himself with sign language or by making particular sounds for certain things. So with him I get to watch a young human develop, as I did with the girls, but I also can see a young boy grow up. He is always ready to give kisses and bury his face into mine as he takes small, quick breaks from his activities.
So why the need to meditate?
Because life needs balance, and it doesn’t come from all things being fantastic and happy, easy and understood all the time. I believe the balance comes from all types of situations arising and being created and our ability to learn who we are and how we handle the different situations. You may have heard the saying, which loosely says ‘it’s not the situation, but what you do with it’.
Having said that, my life as a parent and specifically as a mother has had its challenges to go along with the myriad blessings. I am not implying that a father’s experience is easier or less test-filled. I am only speaking for my own experience as a mother.
I am not a question person. In high school it bothered me infinitely to be asked a redundant question.
When someone would see me coming back from the shops and asked me if I was back: “oh are you back from the shop?”
“Yes. Yes I am back from the shop.”
I worked on it. It still has been hard through the years, but not as much. Now being a mother brings and innumerable amount of questions. As I said above, many of them are repetitive, and the repetition happens within seconds. It’s like a cosmic joke. I try to stay calm and remember I am these children’s primary educator as I stay at home with them.
However, there are other factors too, that make the effort hard to maintain. Having to wake up when the little kids are awake, staying awake and aware the entire day, and sleeping with one eye open at night in case they wake up screaming, or crying, or simply calling your name; figuring out what to feed them, cook, clean, let them help you clean, coming up with school-like lessons, making sure you run the laundry machine while doing other chores or playing with them, making sure they get some time outside the house or otherwise use up their energy and yours, very frequently saying all of these – “stop hitting! Kiss your sister and say sorry! Don’t snatch that from your brother. Be nice. Stop yelling. Don’t jump on the couch, eat your food, don’t use it to practice your long throw!” The list goes on.
Sophia with her kids
In the midst of it all you try to maintain your individuality and you try to have a little side gig, a blog, a life on social media, go to school, do some art… Something or maybe just meditate…!
At the end of the day, or week, or even in the middle of the day, you’re exhausted. You are frustrated. You want to tell your three year old to play the quiet game and not ask you questions for 60 seconds.
So I ask my three year old to play the quiet game, as I get dinner on the table and just want a moment of silence. She seems to understand and want to play, but then she comes to me and whispers a question.
Cosmic jokes, I tell you.
I am not going to get into the role of wife, but it is a part of life that is different from when we were single and without children. Sometimes having a partner can feel like they are a haven, and sometimes they can’t help.
This and I mean all of this and many such “this” is why I choose to meditate.
Sometimes I am so done with the day that I don’t want to meditate. I want to watch last week’s episode of such & such on Hulu or some such service. When I tell myself to meditate, however, it is always exactly what I needed to do.
The 30 minutes to the hour I take to breathe in deeply and consciously, be aware of and absorbed in the Divine Light and Love of the Universe in my heart, remove negative energy from my body and mind, actually is the best thing I do for myself and for my family.
Heartfulness meditation has been helping me in being more patient. It has helped me in remembering my decided role to my children, to myself as an individual with my needs, and finding happiness within that role.
Meditation helps me be present and centered so that I can enjoy these times as I honestly want to; regardless of how tired or frustrated I may be.
My two younger kids sometimes watch me meditate, and I have told them, at separate times, to sit down and do the same. So now they both will do it when they feel like it.
My fourteen year old is currently living in another city. It often makes me feel an angst I can’t explain. While I meditate I am able to not think about it, or anything that is going on in my life. I can just reconnect with … life. After I meditate I feel a bit less like I did before in regards to my oldest child. Then I just meditate again when angst levels rise again (smile).
I strongly suggest Heartfulness meditation to all mothers and all parents. Even if you feel happy 99% of the time, I believe meditation can uplift you then too.
It is not something, I can explain in words, even after all these 1000 words of a blog post. It is something for you to experience for 20 minutes to feel it within you.
This Mother’s Day, give yourself the best gift, your soul would cherish! Visit your nearest Heartfulness Center.
Please join us, the Heartfulness Institute and World Moms Network this summer at the USA for the Heartfulness Conferences. Write to us at worldmomsblog@gmail.com for your free tickets.
Heartfulness Conference 2016
Follow @WorldMomsBlog on Instagram to check out all the Mother’s Day pictures from our contributors.
Picture Credits: Heartfulness conferences, www.artsfon.com, https://pixabay.com
I am a mom amongst some other titles life has fortunately given me. I love photography & the reward of someone being really happy about a photo I took of her/him. I work, I study, I try to pay attention to life. I like writing. I don't understand many things...especially why humans treat each other & other living & inanimate things so vilely sometimes. I like to be an idealist, but when most fails, I do my best to not be a pessimist: Life itself is entirely too beautiful, amazing & inspiring to forget that it is!
More Posts
Follow Me:
by To-Wen Tseng | May 6, 2016 | 2016, Bedtime Routines, Boys, Health, Kids, Meditation, Motherhood, North America, Parenting, Sleep and Children, To-Wen Tseng, USA, World Motherhood, Younger Children
When meditation became the big thing last year, just like yoga in the 1970s, my editor at Taiwan’s Commonwealth Parenting Magazine wanted me to write a piece about meditating with children. So I interviewed Jeff Zlotnik of Meditation Initiative for this assignment. He told me that kids can begin to practice meditation at the age of five, starting with a two minute session.
“Seriously? Does that really work?”
“Yes.” He then explained to me, while scientific evidence shows that human brains benefit from meditation sessions longer than 40 minutes, it is almost impossible to ask a 5-year-old to sit and meditate for that long. A two minute session is appropriate for a 5-year-old, and “even a short session like that helps relief stress and calm kids down.” (more…)
by Mannahattamamma (UAE) | May 5, 2016 | Boys, Equality, Feminism, Girls, Middle East, Older Children, Sports, UAE, World Motherhood
The other day I went to my teenage son’s soccer tournament, and because his game was delayed, I watched a girls’ match finish on the other field. Actually, thanks to the British history in Abu Dhabi, I should say that I went to the “football fixture,” watched the girls play “on the other pitch,” and then at the end of the day took my son to the sports store so he could buy a new pair of “boots” (not cleats). Who knew when we moved here five years ago that one of the ways we would adapt is learning to speak a different version of our native tongue?
As I watched the girls’ match, two girls maneuvered the ball across the pitch, their teammates shrieking encouragement. One girl—a headscarf covering her hair, and leggings under her athletic shorts—passed the ball to her teammate, whose long ponytail was streaked light blue. They brought the ball down the pitch—passed left, passed right—and then Ponytail shot for the goal. The ball bounced off a goal post, looked like it was going to go wide, and then sank into the back of the net past the goalie’s outstretched hands.
“Nice shot,” murmured my son. “Really good pass, too.” Neither of us knew the girls who were playing, but his comment made me happy nevertheless. As the mother of sons, I collect “girl power” moments like this one to remind my sons that they do not have the market cornered on sports excellence. Now that he’d seen for himself, I wouldn’t have to risk being Tiresome Mom by pointing out that those were girls playing pretty kick-ass football.
It’s easy to see in this little episode a lesson about hijab not being the symbol of oppression that so many non-Muslims are quick to assume it is. This girl left her opponents in the dust as she raced down the field, and she pounded her thighs in elation when the ball went into the net. Her war whoop as she ran to the sidelines to celebrate with her teammates would be recognized anywhere as the screech of a happy athlete.
But that’s not really the point. The point has to do with the fact that my fifteen-year-old son didn’t notice the headscarf or the leggings—or the blue ponytail, for that matter—he noticed the football. He noticed what the girls were doing, not what they looked like. As my son moves closer to manhood, a process that seems to be unfolding faster and faster despite my attempts to keep him “my boy” as long as I can, I wonder if my feminist politics have rubbed off: will he become a man who sees what women can do rather than how they look or what they’re wearing?
Isn’t that the question we ask ourselves as our children—those firm little packages of flesh that seemed at one point soldered to our hips—move out into the world: we want to know if our lessons have sunk in, if they’ve been listening even as they seem glued to the Snapchat world in their phones. Does my darling son talk about girls as “hotties” when he’s with his buddies; does he chime in when the conversation turns to which girl has the best body and why?
I don’t know. All I can know is that the other day, what he saw was two people playing great football.
Who knows. Maybe if enough children grow up appreciating what people can do, rather than what they look like or what they do (or don’t) wear on their heads, the world might become a more level playing field pitch.
How do you create awareness about gender equality for your children?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Deborah Quinn, Mannahattamamma of the UAE. Photo credit to the author.
After twenty-plus years in Manhattan, Deborah Quinn and her family moved to Abu Dhabi (in the United Arab Emirates), where she spends a great deal of time driving her sons back and forth to soccer practice. She writes about travel, politics, feminism, education, and the absurdities of living in a place where temperatures regularly go above 110F.
Deborah can also be found on her blog, Mannahattamamma.
More Posts
Follow Me:
by Melanie Oda (Japan) | May 4, 2016 | 2016, Asia, Education, Japan, Parenting, Responsibility
To Cram Or Not To Cram
As my son begins sixth grade, the final year of elementary school here in Japan, I feel a sense of panic.
Have I taught him all he needs to know to navigate the choppy waters of adolescence?
(Mental note: enroll him in swimming lessons while I am still master of his schedule.)
Is his English up to par for his age?
(Reading: yes, writing: no. Another mental note: make more time for him to practice his English writing! He’ll need incentives…. Sticker charts won’t work anymore, what will we do?)
Does he have the ability to identify the difference between a true friend and a jerk? Somehow I don’t think so.
And then there are the looming educational choices. We never really considered that he would need to take the entrance exam for a private junior high, but recently I’ve heard unpleasant rumors about the neighborhood public junior high school. We never sent our son to cram school, so it would seem a private junior high isn’t an option. Are the local schools good enough? Should we start cramming now, sit the test, and hope for the best? Maybe put him into international school? But those are all expensive options that we couldn’t realistically afford for two children.
I have gradually come to the realization that most children in Japan at some point will have to attend cram school. This is something I have wanted to avoid. In my heart I believe that kids learn best through play, and that forcing them into cram schools and extra study stunts their growth in other areas. I had hoped that studying English at home would give them a big enough advantage to get into whatever school they aspire to, but I have to admit that I no longer believe it is enough. My anti-cram school, pro-childhood stance has limited my children’s options for junior high. I need to stop and reassess, then make some choices about a high school entrance exam system that I don’t really understand.
We are a family that could make that happen, financially, with some sacrifices.
To Cram Or Not To Cram
But what about all of those families for whom it isn’t possible?
The cold, hard truth is that seemingly egalitarian Japan is quietly becoming a country of have and have nots.
It feels unfair and somehow immoral that children are not able to make the best of the gifts they were born with because of an entrance exam system that requires attendance at expensive cram schools to have a shot at the best schools, public or private.
Childhood poverty is a growing problem in this country. I hope the education system evolves to give every child a chance to follow their dreams.
Do all children in your country continue into secondary education? What process is used to place students?
Photo Credit to the author.
If you ask Melanie Oda where she is from, she will answer "Georgia." (Unless you ask her in Japanese. Then she will say "America.") It sounds nice, and it's a one-word answer, which is what most people expect. The truth is more complex. She moved around several small towns in the south growing up. Such is life when your father is a Southern Baptist preacher of the hellfire and brimstone variety.
She came to Japan in 2000 as an assistant language teacher, and has never managed to leave. She currently resides in Yokohama, on the outskirts of Tokyo (but please don't tell anyone she described it that way! Citizens of Yokohama have a lot of pride). No one is more surprised to find her here, married to a Japanese man and with two bilingual children (aged four and seven), than herself. And possibly her mother.
You can read more about her misadventures in Asia on her blog, HamakkoMommy.
More Posts
