My son was born at the end of 2014, when I gave lectures everywhere to prepare milk powder money for the arrival of the child.
Fortunately, That year, I developed a curriculum that directly affected my concept of intergenerational rearing. I specially studied a curriculum for several communities in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen-< < Chinese intergenerational rearing > >, mainly facing grandparents and grandparents, and focusing on children’s psychological development laws and scientific rearing methods.
The course is very popular, but the half year from lesson preparation to lecture has strengthened one of my ideas: no matter how hard or tired I am, I must take care of my own children.
Before that, I was not so sure. My peers were brought up by old people. Now also mixed well, and now in the big city newborns, mainly raised by the elderly is the only choice for the vast majority of families, plus many older generation of comrades, have been fully prepared to take grandchildren before retirement. No matter how you look at it, the elderly with children is an imminent thing to have to do.
However, the research during lesson preparation and my own thinking made my wife and I make a difficult decision: to take care of the children by ourselves.
I don’t distrust the old man, I don’t trust myself.
Old people help to take care of children, is not without cost and profit. From the birth of the child, it seems to add a mouthful of people, but the original family environment may actually suddenly add three people. Living and eating together, the original relationship of a family of three will split into five people’s interaction, and interaction can not only stimulate happiness, but also may stimulate contradictions.
I trust my parents very much, or my wife’s parents can help us take good care of our children, but I don’t trust myself very much-when everyone comes together to take care of a small life, but there are inevitably some contradictions, can I handle these relationships as an important node?
Many couples of the same age told me that when they came home from work after a tired day, the old man threw the children over and went on his own. Some old comrades complained to me that the parents of the children ate ready-made food when they got home. The old man also helped bring the children for a day, but he was still not idle at night.
Although these are all trivial matters, will there be cracks in the good feelings that have been cultivated with great difficulty over the years, coupled with the fact that one cannot look up but cannot look down?
As the node between the elderly, children and in-laws, do we have the ability and energy to deal with these problems?
If the price of raising children is the flaw of family relations, will I?
Therefore, I must take care of the children myself, not for fear of hurting the children, but for fear of hurting everyone.
Even if we are careful, we have encountered difficult situations.
When my son was two years old, he scribbled all over the wall with a colored pen.
It was too late for the couple to encourage them. Grandma, who came to see the children once a week, quit:
[This is like what dialect! How can you scribble? ]
I immediately remembered that when I was playing basketball in high school, I accidentally left a basketball mark on the white wall of my house. My mother scolded me until I graduated from college. I knew that her old man’s house was very concerned about this and never intended to correct her attitude.
Children with graffiti all over the wall, parents who think it is quite good, and old people who question it are contradictory.
Finally, in order to satisfy both adults and children, I bought more than 6,000 yuan of tempered glass, spread it from the skirting line to the top, and plastered all the walls my son could reach-drawing casually with a marker pen, but it could be wiped anyway.
The birth of a child is a great good thing, and family members are also enthusiastic and true love for him. However, I will be very sad if the formal conflict of love hurts the relationship between my family and them.
Because everyone is a family, I love not only my children, but also my wife and mother.
My mother takes her children very well. She has a sense of responsibility, cooks well, pays attention to hygiene, and is always alert to the safety risks around her children. However, more things should still be done by the couple themselves, not only because raising children is the obligation of parents, but also because children are also our teachers.
At first, my wife could take care of the children full-time. However, as she gradually returned to work, sometimes we had to [temporarily] keep the children with my mother. Although we were as careful as we were, we also encountered minor troubles.
However, these troubles have strengthened us even more: for the sake of this family, the children still need us to bring them ourselves.
Taking care of children by oneself is a process of both happiness and pain.
Six months ago, our children slept irregularly. Every morning when they got up, they had to lie prone on my shoulder and let me hold him and shake him around the house for two or three hours. Very not easy to coax him to sleep, but also had to hurry up to make lunch for himself, wolf down a few mouthfuls, and the child woke up.
Only when Teacher Ye came home from work, Only then did I exchange time to let myself catch my breath. At this moment, my waist was too sour to straighten up. I needed to lie in bed for half an hour, take a break, and get up again to cook dinner. However, Teacher Ye was not relaxed either. He went out to work at 6 o’clock in the morning. After work at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, he had to turn to the vegetable market to buy vegetables. The leisure activities at home were basically hugging and coaxing children.
Only when the child fell asleep did the day’s battle stop, cleaning [the battlefield], watching a movie and taking a rest.
After our child can climb and walk, I want him to have enough space to explore freely, and I want to ensure that he does not stumble and endanger his safety. I have to spin around behind his buttocks with great spirit all the time and dare not relax for a minute. I have to take advantage of his sleep to clean up the house completely. I dare not let go of every corner. Sometimes I even hold my baby in one hand and stir-fry in the other.
Whenever I take the children downstairs to play, the big brothers and sisters in the community will sigh with emotion that I am not easy when they hear that I take the children myself and there is no old nanny to help me at home. They will also praise me for taking the children very well and being a capable girl.
A few thoughtful words from the uncles and aunts will move me every time, because it is really not easy to take care of the children. Because the experience of this difficult job is too profound, I am also full of admiration for those old people who are unable to walk away from the work of their children’s parents and resolutely shoulder the responsibility of taking care of the children.
Just think, I am only less than 30 years old, and I am healthy and energetic. When I bring up my baby, my back is sore and my head is unkempt. What’s more, my physical strength is not as good as that of the old people before? ! Therefore, when my friends and I complain that the old man will be the shopkeeper after work and give the children full power to his parents, I will tell them that you are already very happy, because the old man helped you through the most bitter and tiring 10 hours, but you are also unfortunate, because in these 10 hours, you missed too many wonderful children’s growth:
When they waved their chubby fists and successfully completed their first turn with a small short leg. When changing diapers for them, sprinkling urine on your face like a prank and giggling;
When they staggered to take the first step and fell in your arms;
When they suddenly took you to Zhumulama Peak on TV and said, “This is a snowstorm-ravaged mountain.”
These wonderful moments will make you lament the miracle of life and all the hard work, which is worth it.
[Take care of your own children], but it is not easy to stick to it.
Before our children were one year old, I also thought about giving up, and I quarreled with Teacher Ye several times about taking the children. Especially when I took the children downstairs to play and other families took the children out for a walk, my grandparents and grandparents were the only young mother, and my inner imbalance arose spontaneously.
Therefore, shortly after our child turned one year old, Teacher Ye suggested that I take my child back to my mother’s family for winter vacation and Spring Festival, hoping that I could take the opportunity to catch my breath and relax. However, in the past two months when I lived in my mother’s family, I was not happy.
Grandma and Grandpa love their children very much and will give me a hug every day when they are free: Grandma will hold the children to visit the neighbor’s house and let the children play with the neighbor’s children; Grandpa will hold the child to watch the fish, catch the fish, change the pattern to take the child contact with nature; Every afternoon when the weather is more comfortable, the old couple will take their children for a walk in the park. In the evening, grandpa will hold the child in his arms, read him stories and so on…
The old couple did their best to take care of the children, and I, a mother, did not give up much. I was very relieved to give them up.
In those two months, I basically returned to the days when I was a girl.
However, I also have to bear the constant, repeated and pervasive nagging of the old couple and their relatives every day, because my parenting concept is different from theirs.
For example, I asked my mother to put as little salt as possible when making supplementary foods for her children. It is best not to put salt. The old people do not understand. They think that their children will have no strength without salt, so they start nagging, nagging when making supplementary foods, nagging when feeding their children, and nagging when eating less.
Another example is that I want to insist on breast-feeding my child until he is two years old. After relatives knew about it, they took turns bombing, saying that you see your children are all one year old and still so thin and weak, because they can’t keep up with the nutrition of breast milk. Now the children who drink milk powder grow well. You see the children of the neighbors, all eat imported milk powder, all grow firmly, and try to persuade me to give up breast milk and so on.
At the beginning, I can also earnestly explain how to do scientific parenting. My approach is in line with the requirements of the International Health Organization and advocated by various authoritative parenting experts. We must keep pace with the times.
However, I underestimated the deep-rooted thinking of the older generation, because they raised my parents in this way, and my parents also raised me in this way. Practical experience shows everything.
As a result, I went from explanation to numbness to irritability. Finally, I couldn’t bear it any longer. I had a big fight with my mother and couldn’t survive the Spring Festival. I packed my luggage and flew back to Beijing.
From the moment I returned to Beijing, I never gave up the idea of “taking care of my own children”, and Teacher Ye and I never had any unhappiness about taking care of our own children, because I clearly realized that the simplest and most direct way to raise children is to take care of them by ourselves.
The older generation has the methods of the older generation, which they have personally practiced and they believe in. Young people have young people’s ideas, Because these ideas are provided by scientific data, we believe in science. Therefore, in child-rearing, we cannot clearly distinguish who is right and who is wrong in black and white. Everyone loves children, but the older generation tries to change the younger generation, the younger generation tries to change the older generation, and everyone stubbornly guards their territory, like a lion that explodes hair.
We are not afraid of change, but we are unwilling to be changed. The two generations have different ideas. This is a problem of the times and an age gap that cannot be bridged.
Family conditions do not allow, can only ask the elderly to take care of children, we need to be more considerate of each other, more understanding; However, if family conditions permit, no matter how hard or tired you are, you must take your own children!