by Mirjam | Mar 9, 2015 | 2015, Cultural Differences, Netherlands, Parenting, Responsibility, World Motherhood
My parents were born and raised in Surinam. They moved to the Netherlands in the 70’s and raised their children there. Though not completely oblivious to Dutch culture, the way my parents raised me was greatly influenced by the motherland. That includes the way chores were done.
In Surinam, and I’m guessing in many non-Western (“Second World”) cultures, chores are simply a part of life. They are part of a daily routine in which all family members share the responsibility of running a household. As a kid, you go to school, do your chores and play in the time that is left. Dinners are prepared together, cleaning is a joint effort and in some cases, children even help parents with their jobs. Except for that last part, this is basically the way I was raised.
My Dutch husband has been raised completely differently. Chores were the responsibility of his parents. They took care of everything and as he got older, chores were gradually given to him as a way to teach him responsibility. I must add that not all Dutch kids are raised exactly the same and that there are many varieties, but the difference between Dutch and Surinam upbringing is apparent.
One of the thoughts behind Dutch upbringing: “Let children be children, let them play. Let them enjoy childhood without too many responsibilities. The time for responsibilities will come soon enough.”
Personally this thought appeals to me yet also conflicts me. I fear that my children will become entitled, spoiled and unable to deal with responsibilities if I simply let them play.
One of the thoughts behind Surinam upbringing: “Chores are normal and necessary and help kids to become responsible independent adults. Every member of the family has to do their share, family comes before individual needs.”
Having to raise children now myself, I need to find a balance between these very different approaches. And it is not easy to find a middle ground. My husband tends to have a “Here, let me do it for you” attitude. And I have a more “I am not your maid, I will teach you to do it yourself” attitude.
I have a sense of contentment and pride when I teach my kids to do their chores independently and without complaint. But I also understand how nice it is for a child to be shielded from too much responsibility and to simply be taken care of. I want to let my kids enjoy their free time in between school, homework and sports, but I also want them to help around the house and feel like they share some of the responsibility of our household.
And so I go back and forth. Some of my Dutch friends drop their jaws or raise their eyebrows when they learn that my kids clean, vacuum, mop their rooms and scrub the toilets every weekend. And my mother will feed my guilt by asking me why I don’t let the kids help around the house more.
My background does have one distinctive benefit. When my children moan about having to do chores, I tell them about my childhood and they stop complaining immediately.
What are your thoughts about chores? Does the way you raise your kids look more like the Dutch way or the Surinam way?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Mirjam of The Netherlands. Photo credit to the author.
Mirjam was born in warm, sunny Surinam, but raised in the cold, rainy Netherlands.
She´s the mom of three rambunctious beauties and has been married for over two decades to the love of her life.
Every day she´s challenged by combining the best and worst of two cultures at home.
She used to be an elementary school teacher but is now a stay at home Mom. In her free time she loves to pick up her photo camera.
Mirjam has had a life long battle with depression and is not afraid to talk about it.
She enjoys being a blogger, an amateur photographer, and loves being creative in many ways.
But most of all she loves live and laughter, even though sometimes she is the joke herself.
You can find Mirjam (sporadically) at her blog Apples and Roses where she blogs about her battle with depression and finding beauty in the simplest of things. You can also find Mirjam on Twitter and Instagram.
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by Nadege Nicoll | Mar 6, 2015 | 2015, Adolescence, Boys, Communication, Family, Home, Humor, Kids, Life, Motherhood, Nadege Nicoll, Older Children, Parenting, Relationships, USA, World Motherhood, Younger Children
At the beginning of 2014, World Moms Blog asked me to define the coming year in one word. I replied: TRINITY.
No, I didn’t think I was a goddess – although feel free to disagree. . . in 2014, I was going to be three different mothers.
I have three kids, and for the first time, each of them was in a different developmental stage. I wasn’t sure whether this was good news or sit-tight-and-ride-the-wave news. But I felt ready, I was going to tackle that motherhood business with optimism and cheers.
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Nadege Nicoll was born in France but now lives permanently in New Jersey with her family. She stopped working in the corporate world to raise her three children and multiple pets, thus secretly gathering material for her books. She writes humorous fictions for kids aged 8 to 12. She published her first chapter book, “Living with Grown-Ups: Raising Parents” in March 2013. Her second volume in the series just came out in October 2013. “Living with Grown-Ups: Duties and Responsibilities” Both books take an amusing look at parents’ inconsistent behaviors, seen from the perspective of kids. Nadege hopes that with her work, children will embrace reading and adults will re-discover the children side of parenthood. Nadege has a few more volumes ready to print, so watch this space…
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by Tina Marie Ernspiker | Feb 27, 2015 | 2015, Expat Life, Family, International, Kids, Life Lesson, Living Abroad, Mexico, Motherhood, Nature, Parenting, Vacationing, World Motherhood, Younger Children
As a wife of one and a mom of four, it seems like I am always learning and discovering! I know I am not alone. Let’s just admit it: The world is a big place, life is a lesson, and children can be the best teachers. Normally my series, Life Lessons with Mexico Mom, is hosted on Los Gringos Locos, but today I am posting here on World Moms Blog.
This week’s life lessons are all about camping in the Mexico mountains. A few weeks ago we took the kids to Grutas Tolantongo. This place is amazing! It is a hot spring park located in the southeast mountains of Mexico. The hot spring water flows out of a waterfall, into a cave, down a series of rapids, and finally through the valley in a hot water river. How awesome does that sound? Here are my insights and experiences as a Mexico Mom, camping near a hot water river:
Life Lesson 56: Don’t leave the baby’s travel crib at home. Brad said we didn’t have room for it in our tent. I thought leaving it was a bad idea but I decided to go with the flow. This was a terrible mistake. Tristan was totally out of his element. He must have cried and screamed for two hours before falling asleep. We were afraid the campground was going to kick us out. Finally I put him in his stroller, which he hated even more then being free range in a small tent. When I got him out of the stroller to change his diaper, he was so exhausted from kicking and yelling that he fell asleep beside me and slept all night. From now on the crib goes with us even if Brad has to sleep outside for lack of tent space 😉
Life Lesson 57: Don’t trust a nine year old near rapids. The river is shallow and divided into pools by large stones that create small rapids. I told Taylor and Alexis to stay in a specific pool and not to go over the rapids into another pool. I was afraid they would fall on the slippy rocks. Sure enough, Taylor decides to stand up on a large stone and make funny faces while wiggling her bum at her sister. She slipped and went through the rapids. Next thing I know, her goggles are floating down the river and she is crying at the top of her lungs. After getting Taylor out of the water, I saw she had scraped her back along the rocks. She had small cuts and bruises down the length of her spine. My poor kid was a little traumatized, but after learning the hard way, she stayed away from the rapids.
Life Lesson 58: Don’t try taking the stroller on a hiking trail. Yes, we are that nutty. I guess we thought that the trail was a very short distance, with flat terrain. Nope. After walking a mile up a mountain, over steps, rocks, and tree roots, traveling through forest complete with banana trees, under a zip line, and over a few creeks, we finally made it to the other half of Grutas Tolantongo. It was worth the effort but thankfully we were able to take the shuttle back to our campsite. Oh yeah, they had a shuttle the whole time. At least we exercised for the week and saw some of the most beautiful mountain scenery in Hidalgo, Mexico.
What life lessons did you learn this past week? Please share it with us below. We want to hear your thoughts from around the world!
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Tina Marie Ernspiker. Tina can be found blogging over at Los Gringos Locos. She is also on Facebook and Twitter.
Photo credit to the author.
by Karyn Wills | Feb 26, 2015 | 2015, Adolescence, Awareness, Being Thankful, Boys, Brothers, Caring, Childhood, Computers, Family, Identity, Life, Life Lesson, Milestones, Motherhood, New Zealand, News, Older Children, Parenting, Rape, Responsibility, Responsibility, Sex, Sleep and Children, Social Media, Technology, Teenagers, World Motherhood
On Saturday night, I had the privilege of hosting three of my 13 year-old son’s friends for a sleep-over. They are lovely boys, and all I have to do is feed them and ignore them. I don’t mention things like showers or teeth-brushing, and in return they pretty much keep to themselves and don’t expect me to converse about Minecraft, Clash of Clans or Team Fortress II.
I teased them a little about not letting girls in while I drove my 9 year-old to a birthday party. I didn’t make a big deal of things when one of them smuggled in cola. I laughed with them, when on my return from the party drop-off, they were trying to stuff MacDonalds packaging into my kitchen rubbish bin. They pushed their limits with bedtime, of course. And they declined the offer of mattresses to sleep on (too much work for them to get them into our lounge) and slept on the carpet…. because, they’re 13 and their bodies still bend in ways mine don’t.
It was both innocent and, I felt, an appropriate mix of mischief and compliance.
Then, on Sunday, I heard of other 13 year-olds who had been in online chat rooms, talking about anal-sex and rape. Not in general terms, but in…. I shall be doing this to you terms…. These are kids who come from great homes and who have very loving families. I immediately thought: there but the Grace of God go I.
Children easily get caught up with what their friends are doing, or those who they emulate. My 13 year-old could have easily been one of those involved and I have no doubt all three of my boys will make stupid mistakes as they move from childhood to adulthood. Just not this time. Thank goodness.
The biggest worry, for me, was that there was at least one unidentified person in the chat-group who could, quite literally, have been anyone. It’s probably another 13 year-old, a friend or acquaintance but it could just as easily be a predator who was scoping for a target. And that makes it all the more scary.
The same is true of a local man who is hanging around liquor stores offering to buy alcohol and cigarettes for underage kids, 14 and 15 year-olds. He does this for a while. Then he offers drugs. Then it’s parties at his house. This is a whole different scenario from the stranger-danger I taught my boys when they were small.
We’re talking about people who are consciously befriending those kids who want to seem older than they are, and who are ready to break rules. They are grooming relationships before they pounce. They are feeding the teenage need to belong and the teenage need to experiment and do things that their parents may not approve of.
So we hit the teenage years, and now I find parenting is not so black and white.
No, I don’t want my kids drinking alcohol or smoking but do I buy them a few beers to take to a party, so that creeps don’t target them and they go behind my back? No, I don’t want my kids smoking pot but if they choose to, should I allow it when they know who grew it, rather than have them turn to those who lace it with P?
No, I don’t want my kids to be suggesting they will rape someone or perform anal sex on them, but I also don’t want them to be excluded from other things their peers are doing.
Suddenly, a conversation about Minecraft seems pretty appealing afterall.
What do you do or have you done to deal with these aspects of parenting?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog from our writer and mother of three, rapidly growing boys in New Zealand, Karyn Willis.
The image used in this post is attributed to JD Hancock and holds a Flickr Creative Commons attribution license.
Karyn is a teacher, writer and solo mother to three sons. She lives in the sunny wine region of Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand in the city of Napier.
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by Tinne from Tantrums and Tomatoes | Feb 23, 2015 | Belgium, Parenting, Responsibility, Tinne, World Motherhood
When you become a parent you soon realize that there are a million things you CAN and WILL do, only you never suspected you were capable of doing them.
You might gag the first time, but trust me, after a few rounds of ‘fish the poop out of the bath’ or a couple of midnight sessions of ‘guess what the baby threw up’ you will be surprised at how big that ‘I can handle this’ list becomes.
But what about the things you cannot do anymore? Here is my Top Five. Feel free to add your own.
1. Splurge a big amount of money on a whim. I’m not a Kardashian, a Hilton or the owner of a money tree. Life is expensive and kids cost a Gazillion dollars/Euros a day. Just feeding them might cost you a small fortune. So I budget and think each purchase through. Carefully.
2. Seeing a movie/ reading a book where something bad happens to a child. Along with the muffin top and the dark line on my lower abdomen came a strange new sensibility. Or rather an inability. Books, movies and documentaries featuring children getting hurt or dying are a NO GO these days. I cannot sit back and watch a drama about how a sick child tears apart his/her parent’s marriage and how they deal with the loss of said child through music/pottery/becoming crazy cat people. Tears will drop at an alarming rate and there will be sobbing. Because that could be my child. That could be me, grieving the most terrible loss a mother can experience. Just the thought of one of my children getting hurt or sick is enough to cut my heart in two and fill my chest with the blackest despair.
3. Get any satisfaction from cleaning /tidying any room or space in your house. Even though I’m a notoriously messy person I too experience those rare moments when I can no longer stand the filth or mess of my entire house or just certain rooms. It is at times like this when you might stumble upon a ‘Cleaning the basement: found the whatnots again! Thought it was lost forever!’ tweet if you follow me on Twitter. These little episodes used to leave me with a deep feeling of accomplishment and the satisfaction that I was – after all – a responsible adult.
Having kids sucked the joy right out of that feeling. As soon as they could walk, their tiny grubby feet left muddy footprints everywhere, and every room they entered immediately looked like a tornado had gone straight through it.
At first I tried to keep up, but honestly, what is the point in cleaning/tidying up when you know it will only be spotless for about a millisecond?
4. Be a dirty, disgusting schlob. Picking your nose? Scratching certain body parts? Drinking straight from the carton? With children in the house these actions will either be ancient history or something you do in deepest, darkest secret. One of the delights of parenthood is that society expects you to educate your children about the many Dos and Don’ts of polite behaviour. To put it bluntly : you are expected to lead by example. Little Freddy/ George/ William will not see why he cannot adjust his boy-parts right in the middle of the store when daddy did so the last time he took the little angel grocery shopping. Nor will little Betty/ Grace/Jennifer refrain from digging that booger out of her wee nose and inspecting the find before putting it in her mouth when mommy did just THAT a few minutes ago.
5. Sleep in on a Saturday. No explanation required.
What are the things you can no longer do as a parent?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Tinne at “Tantrums and Tomatoes” from Belgium. Photo credit: olnetchannel. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.
Born in Belgium on the fourth of July in a time before the invention of the smart phone Tinne is a working mother of two adorably mischievous little girls, the wife of her high school sweetheart and the owner of a black cat called Atilla.
Since she likes to cook her blog is mainly devoted to food and because she is Belgian she has an absurd sense of humour and is frequently snarky. When she is not devoting all her attention to the internet, she likes to read, write and eat chocolate. Her greatest nemesis is laundry.
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by Salma (Canada) | Feb 20, 2015 | 2015, Babies, Canada, Child Care, Communication, Discipline, Home, Homeschooling, Homeschooling, Kids, Life Lesson, Motherhood, Parenting, Preschool, Salma, School, Working Mother, World Motherhood, Younger Children
I recently left my job in a poverty law office to start a daycare and pre-school. Before opening my home, I researched every aspect of the business; at least I thought I did. Since I’d been homeschooling since forever, I thought that my new venture would be an extension of what I had been doing. What you can’t find written in pages of wisdom is how to get through the day with young children – that is something you have to experience on your own. (more…)
An Imperfect Stepford Wife is what Salma describes herself as because she simply cannot get it right. She loves decorating, travelling, parenting,learning, writing, reading and cooking, She also delights in all things mischievous, simply because it drives her hubby crazy.
Salma has 2 daughters and a baby boy. The death of her first son in 2009 was very difficult, however, after the birth of her Rainbow baby in 2010 (one day after her birthday) she has made a commitment to laugh more and channel the innocence of youth through her children. She has blogged about her loss, her pregnancy with Rainbow, and Islamic life.
After relocating to Alberta with her husband in 2011 she has found new challenges and rewards- like buying their first house, and finding a rewarding career.
Her roots are tied to Jamaica, while her hubby is from Yemen. Their routes, however, have led them to Egypt and Canada, which is most interesting because their lives are filled with cultural and language barriers. Even though she earned a degree in Criminology, Salma's true passion is Social Work. She truly appreciates the beauty of the human race. She writes critical essays on topics such as feminism and the law, cultural relativity and the role of women in Islam and "the veil".
Salma works full-time, however, she believes that unless the imagination of a child is nourished, it will go to waste. She follows the philosophy of un-schooling and always finds time to teach and explore with her children. From this stance, she pushes her children to be passionate about every aspect of life, and to strive to be life-long learners and teachers. You can read about her at Chasing Rainbow.
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My parents were born and raised in Surinam. They moved to the Netherlands in the 70’s and raised their children there. Though not completely oblivious to Dutch culture, the way my parents raised me was greatly influenced by the motherland. That includes the way chores were done.
