Get in the Trenches!

Get in the Trenches!

A recent report suggested that to be happy, a person need spend only 2.5 hours per week with her children. I wonder, though, why have children if you are only going to spend less than a half an hour a day with them?

I always knew that I really wanted to have children – that they wouldn’t represent just another award to admire on my wall. I always wanted to be the hands-on mother who did not delegate her parenting duties to someone else. Deep down in my soul, I believed that I would be a good mother. I know I wanted to be a good mother.

Little did I know then how much work parenting actually requires. I mean real work, hard work, done consistently. And seemingly day in and day out, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the rest of your life. Once you are a mother, you see, you will always be a mother.

Do you think you are ready? Surely no one is ever really ‘ready’ for the long days and longer nights after one’s babies are born. No one is ever prepared for the real work that it takes to be a mom.

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, a ‘Yale Mom’ (a Yale law professor), Amy Chua, describes how Chinese mothers are different from Western, specifically American, mothers. She seems to make some sweeping generalizations which can be misleading. I’d argue that not all Chinese mothers produce concert pianists and not all American mothers raise couch potatoes.

As a ‘Yale Mom’ – that is, a graduate of Yale and a mother of a Yale graduate – I am a hard working mother in every sense of the word. I have gotten ‘into the trenches’ (one of Ms. Chua’s suggestions) with my children to force them to read, practice the piano, participate in sports, and even do a dramatic performance. Discipline and hard work coupled with a strong belief that your child can do anything as long as they practice for 10,000 hours (see Outlier by Malcolm Gladwell) will produce children who are accomplished. There is no mystery about the ingredients necessary to make almost anyone successful. The equation is 90% hard work plus 10% talent.

When you believe in your children all things are possible. That belief, however, must be combined with hours of your children’s practice and your support to achieve the goals that you set for your children and that they set for themselves. I do believe that children come wired with innate abilities and also that mothers should help to identify those gifts then give their children every opportunity to excel using them.

Not everyone is going to be a concert pianist or a world-renowned scientist, but everyone has a gift. As a mom, you can’t get lazy and give up on your child just because your child gets angry with you for pushing him or her to excel. You are their mother first and foremost. If you are friends with your children as well, then you are lucky.

As a mother you are supposed to help mold and shape your children into responsible and self-supporting adults. You owe them your time, energy, and all of your efforts to help them achieve this goal. Your children owe you, too, if you give them your time, energy, support and love. If you are a parent who gives nothing to help your children attain their dreams then I don’t think your children owe you very much.

Not only is parenting hard work, but it also costs lots of money, too, rather than paying you a lot of money. Regardless, parenting is a real job that requires you to invest your time, energy, money, love, and support in order to achieve the outcome you want. And it requires constant learning. I can’t wait to read Amy Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother, due to be released on Tuesday. I hope I will learn some new ways to help my children be the best they can be.

Diary of a Yale Mom

PS-All of my children played the piano. They each then decided to play other instruments including the flute, clarinet, french horn and violin. I am happy that there are more than two instruments in an orchestra.