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 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 Olga Mecking | Feb 16, 2015 | Identity, Life, Life Balance, Netherlands, World Motherhood
I like my name. It is short, easy to pronounce, Slavic but international at the same time. I was not always fond of it but now I am. 5 years ago I changed my last name to match my husband’s and not long after that, I acquired yet a new first name: Mama.
I like that as well, but it is not the only name I have. There are others. Sometimes, I’m Mrs. Mecking, my husband’s wife. The woman who fills in forms and goes to the doctor, the one who studied and has a MA degree, who once held a job. Sometimes, I am known as the European Mama, blogger, writer, translator and contributor to many great sites, like World Moms Blog. For friends and family, I am simply Olga or endearments thereof.
I’ve never liked being just one thing, so it is no wonder that when motherhood threatened to take over everything, I fought back and fought hard. I didn’t want to be “just a mother”. I wanted motherhood to complement the many colours of my personality, not to repaint it.
So when I had my first child, I worked hard to finish my MA thesis. When my second child was born, I started a blog. When my son came along, I consciously decided to keep writing as soon as it was possible because already I could feel my brain being fogged over by sleep deprivation and I wanted to keep it sharp and alert. I knew if I was to remain sane, I’d have to fight against the “mommyfication”.
And fight I did. The more I wrote, the more I felt I was returning to my own self. And it felt good. Some told me “You may regret not being with them every minute of their lives, time goes so quickly”. I don’t think so. I know why I did what I did and why it was necessary.
Apparently there is a discussion whether it is OK for children to call the parents by their first names. For a long time, my children called me “mama” but my husband went by his first name. I asked them why this was the case. My eldest answered that she always thought my name was Mama. Don’t get me wrong, she knows that my name is Olga, but to her, I’m Mama.
As she begins to make more sense of the world, she figures out that there is more to her mother than just being Mama. Recently, she asked me: “Are you Olga or are you Mama?”.
I explained that my name is Olga but that I’m her mom, and that she has a name as well and that she is a daughter and a sister, and a friend and a student at school. And that she is also herself.
They say that a woman is usually remembered by her relations to someone else. Obituaries say “good wife, devoted mother, great friend”. That is not how I want to be remembered. I want to be remembered as a smart, clever, intelligent person, in short, I want to be remembered for my own sake.
And I want my children to understand that yes, I am their mother, but I am also many other things at the same time. I wear many hats. Sometimes, I am not entirely sure what I am. Sometimes I am one things and mere seconds later, I am something else.
I am always changing, always adapting, always in motion. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. Because while standing still to catch your breath is great, I know that in this case, to stand still is to stagnate. It’s not that I dislike being a mother, but the only way I can enjoy it it’s when I can be something else for a change. I want to be Mama, but I also want to be Olga, Mrs. Mecking or The European Mama. I want to be able to change my names like I change my clothes and wear something new every day.
What about you? Do you mind being “Mama” or do you prefer to have many names?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by The European Mama, Olga Mecking of The Netherlands. Photo credit: Mike Licht. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.
Olga is a Polish woman living in the Netherlands with her German husband. She is a multilingual expat mom to three trilingual children (even though, theoretically, only one is trilingual since she's old enough to speak). She loves being an expat, exploring new cultures, learning languages, cooking and raising her children. Occasionally, Olga gives trainings in intercultural communication and works as a translator. Otherwise, you can find her sharing her experiences on her blog, The European Mama. Also take a while to visit her Facebook page .
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by Ann Marie Wraight | Feb 9, 2015 | Greece, Life Lesson, Parenting, Special Needs, World Motherhood
Recently, I was talking to my two teenage sons about the characters from books they loved most when they were in primary school. I was confused when they told me one of their favorites was One Legged Little Jak who lived in OUR tree house just behind the stable…
What book was that? Someone had written a book about a special needs child living on our property?
The void in my mind must have been reflected on my blank face because Peter patiently reminded me that I used to tell them a bedtime story every night for months when they were about 6 and 7 years old.
The hero of our nightly tale was One Legged Jak, the ghost of a little Turkish boy who had passed away on our land hundreds of years earlier during a famine.
Some of you may find this rather macabre and inappropriate for small children to hear as a bedtime story. But as memories of Jak and his adventures started flashing like fireworks in my head, I remembered what a wonderful teaching/learning tool Jak and his adventures had been when my boys were little. During their adventures with Jak, my kids dealt with bullies, thieves and mad goats, battled with over demanding parents and survived gale force winds and floods! As it all came back to me, I recalled that Jak had been a specific creation with a threefold purpose.
The first goal was for my boys to overcome their childhood fear of night time ghosts and ghouls by providing them with their own personal spirit-buddy. They loved Jak from the very first chapter! Within 2 weeks of “meeting” Jak they could sleep without the light on as they believed nothing spooky or scary would mess with their spirit friend! They felt as if Jak would look out for them and protect them from anything bad. I’d explain to my boys that just because something was different from them, that certainly didn’t mean it was negative. Quite the contrary! Just look at Jak!
The second goal was to show that accidents and physical deformity can happen at any time and to anyone.
I didn’t want my kids growing up with a biased attitude towards people with special needs but to be as kind and considerate as they were with their own family members.
My children’s Greek gran and grandpa both have serious disabilities. Grandpa had lost one of his eyes and partial sight from the other in a childhood accident. Grandma was born with malformed legs and can walk only with the aid of crutches. Jak had only one leg and used crutches, too. When my boys were on their “adventures” with Jak, part of our story time included an interactive discussion when they had to find creative ways to use Jak’s wooden leg to their advantage. Some suggestions included using his crutches to cross a flooded stream and unscrewing his wooden leg to fight off an attack from a deranged goat! Well, my point was that you should always try to make something positive out of something bad. Even now, Matthew (my 13 year old) often borrows his grandmas crutches to help herd the flock of sheep on our family farm!
The third goal was to encourage my boys to “hang out” with a buddy from a different culture who spoke and behaved differently from them. I chose a Turkish background for several reasons. Firstly, only 1 generation ago our village was known as Turkish Bratva. In recent decades it’s been given the Greek name of Harokopi. Secondly, there is still a lot of tension between the Greeks and Turkish in this part of Greece, especially among the older generations. I definitely did not want my children to believe the racist ideas of some so-called educated Greeks.
Just before I started the saga of Jak and his adventures, one of my German friends told me one of the most shocking things I’d heard about a Greek educator. Her daughter’s 1st grade teacher would tell her pupils that Turkish people were bad and ate children at the drop of a hat! She was horrified when her daughter started having night terrors, convinced that one of their Turkish friends would sneak into the house at night and gobble her up! When the parents discovered that the teacher had told the whole class this terrible thing, they invited her to their home for a friendly confrontation. They didn’t want to go to school and involve the headmistress straight away as this teacher in all other areas seemed to be doing a commendable job. There was also the possibility that their daughter had gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick and confused a fairy tale with part of a history lesson.
My friend told me later that the teacher was a descendant of Greeks who had lived in Asia Minor but had been violently expelled from Smyrna by Turks several generations earlier. Her great grandparents and their surviving relatives had barely escaped the bloodbath alive. As a result, the stories of her grandparents had been told to each generation and she had been brought up hating Turkish people.
There was a big possibility that my children would also have this teacher or have contact at some point in their lives with someone from a similar background. There was no question that Jak HAD to be a loveable Turkish rogue who would protect Peter and Matthew from all evil!!!
So that’s how and why Jak was born. How could I have filed him away and misplaced him the last few years when he was a nightly visitor for so long? In retrospect, I think that as my husband was in a special needs school around that time and often took our boys with him on visits, I believed that real interaction with unique personalities was even more beneficial than with the imaginary Jak. That doesn’t mean that Jak will be forgotten, though.
Do you tell your children stories to help them cope with childhood fears?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Ann Marie Wraight of Greece. Photo credit to the author.
Having lived in 4 different countries, Ann Marie finds it difficult to give a short answer about where she's from. She regards herself: Brit by birth, Aussie by nature, with a sprinkling of Greek and German based on her insatiable appetite for tasty food and chilled beer!
This World Mom has been married to her Greek soulmate for 16 years and they are the proud but constantly challenged parents of two overactive teenage boys. (She secretly wonders sometimes if she was given the wrong babies when she left the maternity clinic.) She can't explain the fascination and ability that her 13 and 14 year-olds show in math and physics or that both boys are ranked 1st and 2nd nationally in judo. Ann Marie can only conclude that those years of breastfeeding, eating home cooked meals and home tutoring really DO make a difference in academic and physical performance! The family is keeping its fingers crossed that---with the awful economic crash in Greece---continued excellence in math and/or judo will lead to university scholarships...
In addition to writing, enjoying a good glass of wine and movies, Ann Marie also works as a teacher and tends their small, free-range farm in the Greek countryside.
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by Sophie Walker (UK) | Jan 19, 2015 | Life, Life Lesson, Parenting, Sophie Walker, UK
I’m driving my daughters to school through a windswept city. The storm last night was long and loud and its effects are everywhere, from turned over bins to broken branches. The traffic is moving slowly.
On the radio, a presenter reads a list of bleak news headlines. Britain, with its large Muslim population, is still parsing the consequences of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in France. Ahead of May’s general election, the main UK political parties are making economic promises. Two climbers have scaled a 3,000ft mountain in America without aids.
The girls yawn – tired from a night of listening to roaring gales – and ask for pop music.
“I’m trying to listen,” I say. “I’m trying to figure out what to write about today.” “What do you mean?” asks Grace, who recently turned 13.
“I have to write an article for World Moms Blog. What do you think I should write about?”
“I think you should tell them that I’m 13,” says Grace.
From the back seat Betty, who is 5, says: “I think you should write – ‘Dear World Cup – ‘ “
“Not World Cup, you idiot!” interposes Grace, who at 13 takes offence often, now. “Don’t call her an idiot,” I tell her, and steer around a large chunk of tree on the road.
To Betty I explain:
“It’s not the World Cup, darling. It’s a website for World Mums to write about their lives.”
“Oh, okay,” says Betty. “Then you should write: ‘Dear World Mums – ‘”
“It’s not a letter!” splutters Grace, who by now a really rather indignant 13-year-old.
“Go on Betty,” I say.
Betty clears her throat and gives Grace a glare, then says, “I think you should write – ‘Dear World Mums, in all of your countries, the world is not just about your countries.’”
Grace opens her mouth to protest again. I shush her.
“- it’s also about lots of planets,” Betty continues. “For example, there’s Kewpicker – “
My eyes meet Grace’s. She mouths: “Jupiter.” “ – and there’s the Moon. And – there are all the stars,” Betty ends with a flourish.
“I see,” I say. “And what do you think is out there among all those planets?”
“Well, there’s aliens, and lots of dark, and lots of rocks,” answers Betty, ticking the answers off on her fingers. “And you have to be very careful not to take your space hat off, cos then you won’t be able to breathe.”
Grace sits up, interested now.
“I used to want to be an astronaut. But then I saw that film, Gravity, and thought – no way!”
“Really? Why?” “Because it was so scary! I realised how dangerous and difficult it is!”
“Yes,” I nod. “But she – the astronaut – still succeeded, didn’t she? How did that bit make you feel?”
“Well….” Grace scrunches up her face and considers. “It was cool that she was a woman. And I suppose it made me feel like it’s worth trying really hard. And that sometimes you have to see past how frightening and difficult things can be, and just keep going.”
There’s a moment’s silence in the car. I look at Grace and smile at her and she smiles back at me, and sits back in her chair, pleased with the thought. I can see her turning it over while we drive in silence for a few moments.
Then, from Betty: “Pleeeeeeeese can we have some songs now, Mummy?”
I turn the dial and a current favourite bursts out of the speakers, all horns and funky guitars and a silly, strutting lyrics. Immediately the girls both start singing along.
When it’s finished, Betty asks: “Do you think there’s music in space?”
What profound moments have come from your fun conversations with your kids?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Sophie Walker of the United Kingdom.
Writer, mother, runner: Sophie works for an international news agency and has written about economics, politics, trade, war, diplomacy and finance from datelines as diverse as Paris, Washington, Hong Kong, Kabul, Baghdad and Islamabad. She now lives in London with her husband, two daughters and two step-sons.
Sophie's elder daughter Grace was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome several years ago. Grace is a bright, artistic girl who nonetheless struggles to fit into a world she often finds hard to understand. Sophie and Grace have come across great kindness but more often been shocked by how little people know and understand about autism and by how difficult it is to get Grace the help she needs.
Sophie writes about Grace’s daily challenges, and those of the grueling training regimes she sets herself to run long-distance events in order to raise awareness and funds for Britain’s National Autistic Society so that Grace and children like her can blossom. Her book "Grace Under Pressure: Going The Distance as an Asperger's Mum" was published by Little, Brown (Piatkus) in 2012. Her blog is called Grace Under Pressure.
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by Nadege Nicoll | Jan 15, 2015 | 2015, Awareness, Communication, Cultural Differences, Family, France, Girls, Global Citizenship, Humanity, International, Loss of Child, Motherhood, Nadege Nicoll, News, Older Children, Parenting, Terrorism, World Events, World Motherhood, Younger Children
A year ago, girls, teenagers who wanted an education so they could look forward to a great future, were abducted from their school in Chibok, Nigeria. They were taken away, kidnapped and removed from their family, because they were guilty of having ambitions. All these girls had to defend themselves were books.
What’s left of this horror is parents. Mothers and fathers, grieving for a loss that can never be overcome, hurting from a pain that will never lessen, left to wonder why, and knowing that no answer will ever alleviate their sorrow. Because there is no justification.
A few months ago, Peshawar happened and with it, the world once again, lost its innocence. Over 150 kids massacred, because they were guilty of being the children of their parents. All these kids had to defend themselves were notepads.
What’s left of this horror is parents. Mothers and fathers, grieving for a loss that can never be overcome, hurting from a pain that will never lessen, left to wonder why, and knowing that no answer will alleviate their sorrow. Because there is no justification.
Last week, my home country, France, was the theatre of repeated terrorist attacks. People were massacred because they went to work that day, or decided to do their grocery shopping. A brutal attack, with one side holding weapons, the other pencils.
And the violence continued with news of over 2000 killed in Baga, Nigeria.
What’s left of this horror is parents. Mothers, fathers, grieving for a loss that can never be overcome, hurting from a pain that will never lessen, left to wonder why, and knowing that no answer will ever alleviate their sorrow. Because there is no justification.
Mothers, fathers of this world, our families are being hurt beyond comprehension. Pencils are fighting bombs, words are matched with weapons. These violent attacks are not about gender, race, religion, background, or opinions. They are about pulverizing families. This is a call to unite. We all have a responsibility to do everything in our power to preserve our families and help others do the same.
We are all Chibok girls. We are all Peshawar. We are all Charlie.
How do we, global parents everywhere, teach our children to cherish and preserve their families? How do we unite to show them that violence is never the answer?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Nadege Nicoll. She was born in France but now lives permanently in New Jersey with her family. Nadege also writes a daily blog for moms who need to smile at everyday life. She can be found on Twitter, Facebook and her website www.nadegenicoll.com.
Image creation by author.
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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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.
