The Best Advice I’ll Never Take

I have a friend, Jana, who makes all the stuff I struggle with as a mother look easy.  She also makes all the stuff I do well look easy.  She should, therefore, be easy to hate, but she’s also funny, kind, and somebody I could never get tired of being around. So when Jana explained her handy-dandy system for getting her children to cheerfully do chores, while at the same time systematically teaching them every conceivable household task, I knew I had to do it, too.  The whole concept was sheer genius.  It was even visually appealing. There was only one small problem.  I am not Jana. The System requires parents to be organized and aware of what their children are doing pretty much all the time.  Two strikes for me.  It also requires mom to be consistent.  Now, normally I do shoot for that, but when I was initially contemplating Jana-tizing my chore system, I was very pregnant (read: unbelievably huge) with my fifth child.  My twins were not yet three years old.  Rules and consistency were being thrown out the window in favor of “whatever gets mom through the next few months.” After my baby’s birth Jana kindly offered again to help me set up the system.  Now, let me explain something so you don’t have to learn this the hard way:  We knew we wanted one more kid after our twins.  We were also in our mid-thirties and not getting any younger.  We thought, how much more difficult could our lives get? Well, it turns out that X number of children born in X – 1 number of years equals mass chaos and exhaustion.  Even though little number five has been an absolute joy, we now realize that particular spacing decision was insane.  We wouldn’t give her back, and we’re starting to feel like we’re not drowning, but then was absolutely not the time to revamp a large part of our parenting practices. So will I be adopting Jana’s system sometime in the future?  No.  I have realized that although it’s undoubtedly effective, my “go with the flow” personality would make it way more painful for me than it would be for the kids.  I do better with a straightforward, not remotely creative or fancy strategy:  a list stuck to the refrigerator with the implied threat, “Do this or else!” That is not to say I haven’t learned something from Jana.  I am more mindful of where each of my children is in learning necessary life skills. I think about where Kira needs to be in six and a half years when she goes to college, and whether or not she knows enough to be a good roommate.  I think I’m doing a better job of teaching Hallie and Sophia that their actions all have consequences, including what they don’t do. Good friends, good mothers, are like that.  They don’t insist, “Be like me,” but allow those around them to adopt the essence of what is admirable, and mold it into a shape that works well for them. Thanks, Jana.