I’ve been thinking about needs. Actual needs, perceived needs… all in light of children and the decision making involved in parenting. The quick and dirty truth is that young babies need their parents constantly, especially their mommy, and caring for them can instantaneously take over your whole life. This is healthy; you have a baby (or two babies, in our case), and you completely eliminate any remnant of your old life to move to a cyclical, task-oriented lifestyle that is exhausting and unclear and quite a bit of work. Matt compares our first year as parents to a long day at a factory job… we eventually learned all the associated tasks and experienced very hard work with high success rates because we constantly corrected problems. Hungry? Here’s food! Wet? Here’s dry! Tired? Here’s sleep! Lonely/confused/affectionate/unknown? Here’s snuggles. The hit and miss ratio is a painful reminder of how little you know about these tiny ones, but you just keep offering the various options until something works and they are very good about letting you know what they need. We offered and offered and offered ourselves and wore ourselves out investing into our tiny ones because they had real needs and we could meet them. And of course, we fell apart because we have needs too and those got shoved aside for a bit. With time, healthy parents bring their needs back into the picture and find ways to acclimate to the unbalance of needing and being needed every moment of every day. You learn to value your marriage and make time for it and value your alone time and make time for that and value others and make time for them, all while maintaining the value of your children and dedicating yourselves to them.
Matt compares this second year of parenting to my job as a research coordinator for Dr. Perlman. No longer are the tasks just menial and repetitive and highly rewarding… the workload is now very high-end. We spend a lot of time just thinking things through to determine the best way to handle any given situation. The physical labor workload is drastically reduced because our kids are independent in many ways, but the thinking is exponentially more difficult! Our decisions matter very much and we aren’t just doing the job of a trained monkey anymore (feeding/diapering/holding/reading/feeding/diapering/and so on). And the work comes in waves… some days are extremely intense and wipe us out completely and other days are strings of bliss just floating along until the next crisis drops like a bomb. Our twoddlers have different needs and we have different needs than we all did at the beginning. So we keep morphing and growing and finding joy in the successes and sorrow in the failures, and like always, living a day at a time trying to love each other the best we can in this family.
The concept that the parents have needs too often goes unnoticed. To be a good parent, we expect ourselves and/or others expect us to be constantly sacrificial, non-needy people who can selflessly give, give, give and the reward is hoping for a good citizen 18 years later with little feedback until then. This is one of the biggest lies I have encountered as a mom. Parents have needs too! And not all of them are reasonable, but that doesn’t mean we need them any less.
Parents need other adult time. As fulfilling and rewarding as mothering is (I’m not sure I could be any more positive about it because I sincerely love being with my children and I take great joy in getting to know them every day and I talk about that all the time), I would crack apart if mothering was the sole definition of Jaime. I have so much more to offer! If I invest in myself with relationship and service and thinking time, all of that investment becomes instant gain to my children because they have a happy, healthy, balanced mom who loves them and values them without needing them to be her everything. I think kids are incredibly aware and carry heavy burdens of meeting needs at a very young age. They love their parents and deeply want to please them and they can push themselves to please us. This is such a vicious cycle for them and for us as parents because my kids cannot possibly meet all my needs. Neither can Matt. Neither can a friend. Neither can a job. Neither can the church. No one should carry that pressure alone; it is too heavy! Sometimes, we need our kids to need us in specific ways that they don’t actually need us anymore, and they might try to do it to make us happy, but it isn’t good for anyone.
Parents need recognition. I often wish that Zach and Rissa could say, “Hey mommy, it’s okay that you aren’t a stellar mommy today. We remember back in month 7 when you were amazing and that still counts! Just go ahead and suck for a week or two and it’s no big deal… you did enough back then to cover for your mistakes now.” If only that were true! We can’t ever rest on our laurels, can we? I was so thrilled to breastfeed my kids, but when I lost that ability, I thought I couldn’t be a good mom anymore. That was a lie! I had to redefine what a good mom was (and by God’s grace, I found a new definition) so that I could continue trying to be one, or I would have lost the battle 5 months into the process. They need me to be a good mom today, right now, wherever we currently are. Great if I did a good job back in the day and oh well if I didn’t. I need to do a good job right now… you can’t ever build up enough to stop trying. And the endlessness of trying day in and day out is overwhelming for me sometimes. But my kids are too little to say, “Wow, you did the dishes and the laundry and played with us and went grocery shopping and despite the fact that you feel like you didn’t accomplish anything today, we think you rock, Mommy!” I rely on the Lord’s peaceful voice of satisfaction with me and my loving Matt and my kind friends and my own inner monologue to say, “Jaime, you are doing the best you can. That is so great.” If you ever come across a single mom, I would love it very much if you did 2 things for her because she is likely not getting these enough: 1) give her a giant hug. She is amazing and not enough people say so with hugs. 2) tell her that she is valuable and beautiful and give one reason that has to do with her parenting and one reason that has to do with who she is (NOT her parenting). This is a powerful way to bless a mom, I promise, and it won’t cost you anything.
Parents need to feel needed. This is probably the most unreasonable need that I have. I want to be appreciated and wanted and necessary and significant. I want the world to fall apart if I am not in it because no one can go on without me. Sound familiar? So full of myself, hmm? 🙂 But it is true… I love to be needed and to offer myself! As hard as it is to do it all day long every single day, I often believe I would die if no one needed me. Of course, I am needed. And so are you. And maybe we aren’t hearing that enough. The body of Christ needs us. Our families need us. Our workplaces need us. Our relationships need us. The biggest problem with needing to be needed for me is that I can create needs just to feel good about filling them. I have an example and it comes with a disclaimer: this example is about me! No finger pointing or judging of you, especially if we do things differently. You know your kids and I would never indicate that you need to fix anything! I’m just saying that I, Jaime, am very capable of creating a need just so I can fill it and this is one way I can do this: let’s say my babies have a need for sleep. I love them and I am their mommy and I am the answer to every problem, right? (wrong). So I rock them and hold them and cuddle them (all good things) and what they really wanted was their bed, their blankie and some solid sleep. I’m getting in the way of what they need by offering myself when I should offer them what they actually need. They need me too, and I know that! They need me to put them to bed and to love them and to rock and cuddle and hold them before bed and to come back to them when they need me, but it is possible for me to do all these good things, and THEN continue to offer myself instead of what they really need. I create a need for sleep by preventing them from sleeping so that I can try to help them sleep. Illogical, but very possible.
The very biggest blessing about the gift of twins in this household has been the lessons I have learned about letting go of what I demand or need when it is unreasonable. I never had just one baby at a time who got every second of my attention, and that is so good for me! I never had to wean my first child of my constant attention so I could find time for my second child. Children one and two came in the same minute as one another, and they are constantly waiting for me to be available to them because I have both of them to take care of! They love that I care for their twin too, so they are often more than willing to wait. But the lesson is for me: I’m not the answer to my children’s needs. I can meet them as best as I can, but I found so much freedom in letting go of my need to be “the perfect mom.” I will tell you directly, that title doesn’t exist. It’s a lie, lie, LIE. I am free to just love and care for my kids instead of expecting too much from myself and from them. And when I slip back into demanding Jaime who NEEDS this and WANTS that and DEMANDS this etc., thankfully, I fail immediately. I have 2 constant reminders (the most amazing little people ever!) that I can’t make this work just by my own effort because I’ve tried, and I just can’t. And I’m alot happier and a much better mom when I can admit that.