Needs, Sleep, and Drawing the Mama Bubble

Theory: Always put your child’s needs before your own.

     First, let's re-define a "need."  A need, as defined by the Mama Bubble Dictionary is something that one cannot live effectively without: air, water, food, shelter, sleep, and medical treatment if your leg has been severed.   If you are a child growing up in the Jones home, your list continues with: an education, laughter, and scream-therapy pillows. 

     As moms, we give. Despite the endless crying, sleepless nights, and poopy diapers, we cannot give enough love to these little miracle creatures who emerge from our bodies and head off too quickly into the world with half of our souls stuffed in their back pockets. We do not require or expect reciprocation for our efforts. We give life and love which honors our mothers, who first gave us life and love.

     With God’s exuberant joy we give over our bodies to produce them, our breasts to nourish them, our careers to care for them, and our sleep to comfort them.  We give over our minds to determine how best to console, teach, and inspire them.  Every day of our lives becomes related to theirs and seeking the revelations of their growth, intelligence, and ability.   We want our children to achieve even more desperately than we want ourselves to achieve.  So much so, that we show them time and time again how something is to be done.  The truth is that we are actually doing it for them.   

     The idea of sacrificing for our children is well-established in our society, as it was only a hundred years ago that mothers went hungry, so that their children could eat.  Nearly every family history has a story of parents sacrificing their own welfare or enjoyment for their kids to go to college or see the world or live their dreams.  Giving is what we do, but the boundary line between enough and too much has a different location for each child. We, as mamas, are not necessarily great judges of where that boundary should lie.    

     It begins with sleep.  At some point between the ages of six months and one year, each of my children went from needing me in the middle of the night to wanting me in the middle of the night.  It was something in their cries that alerted my husband to the change.  A “need cry” is very different from a “want cry”; both are alarming if you are a first-time parent.  A need cry starts off loud and high-pitched without breaks.  A want cry is a whining that becomes more insistent with breaks to see if it has had an effect. 

     “She’s just complaining,” he told me as I started to get out of bed.  “She just wants you to come get her.”

     “What?” I looked at him like he was crazy.  “She doesn’t know the difference.” 

     Oh, but she did.  Now that I have been decreasingly manipulated by my own four kiddos, I believe children are born with the innate understanding of the maternal human spirit.  What the heck does that mean?  It means that they’ve got our number. There is a moment for every human being when they figure out: “If I cry, Mama comes.”  The first step in their developing brains is to test that theory and the next logical step is to use it.  It is not malicious.  It is brilliant. 

     What is keeping mamas from stopping this manipulation?  As a mama, do I want to go in there?  Absolutely.  They smell so fabulously sweet and feel so soft in their little cotton-footed jammies.  It makes your heart melt into a big ole puddle, but… I'm going to ruin the moment for you…your presence will only stimulate them into a wakeful period that will become WIDE awake, disallowing the experience of self-soothing.  Precious babies, as soft and warm as they are, need their sleep, too.  They need to experience the awareness that they are capable of handling this first challenge themselves.  Nothing breeds self-confidence in a person more than accomplishment. It is a shame that a light does not automatically flash when this moment of understanding occurs to demand that mamas acknowledge this connection in their baby’s brain.  Lots of mamas yep, I was one of them continue to believe that their children need them long after they don’t.

          It doesn’t end with sleep.  A "want" is anything other than a need.  When I was a toddler, I tried to talk my mother into buying a piece of candy for me by saying, "Mama, I neeeed this!"  Saying "I need" about an "I want" can have a lot of power over a novice mama. 

     I cannot count the times I tied shoes, did a homework problem, made a bed “correctly,” made a play date, and took homework to the school-all jobs my children were perfectly capable of doing once they struggled through it.  By giving my kids my time and my memory, I did not give them a reason to tap into their own.  Giving to others is a blessing for us, but giving to someone who does not need it only delays their development.  Present-day mothers are expanding their roles and their perceived value much like the value of internet stocks of the late nineties and the housing bubble of late.  We have filled our schedules with what we assume are "needs" when most of our time is actually affected by "wants."  Does this give us joy or give our kids inspiration?  Or does this cause us stress and our kids to ignore their own creative ability?  I am not going into why we do it, as every mama has her own backstory.  What must be addressed is the effect it has on them and on us.

     Having to discern that something is a problem, then solving that problem is the single greatest accomplishment in learning.  Kids will tell you that Edison failed two thousand times (not a substantiated figure) to create a working light bulb.  The point being, every time someone tries something that doesn’t work, they learn in the failure.  In fact, I believe that failure is a more effective teacher than success.  How many times will a child touch a hot stove without an oven mitt?  How many times will a baker mistake salt for sugar before making cupcakes?  How many times will a child forget his permission slip when the consequence is that he has to miss the field trip?   I hear you, “It is just easier and faster to tie those shoes myself.  He won’t trip and fall and knock out his teeth.”   One industrious person replaced the laces with Velcro.  Definitely a time-saver, but what did that do?  It gave us a bunch of kids who can’t tie their own shoes!

     Mamas of babies six months old or older, draw your Mama Bubble right here.  Mamas regularly need eight hours of sleep, so that they are capable of being patient with their children, drive safely, and have the ability to find important vocabulary words in the back of their brains.  If you do not have repaired neurons, you will not have the capacity to reach to the back of your brain to find the information you must have to rear healthy children.  Needing eight hours of sleep is not being selfish.

    This country and all of its glorious inventions was born on the backs of children who grew up with “not enough” and with mamas who did not do it for them.  If there is no discomfort, there is no reason to change.

     As you watch your babies fuss with the cardboard pages of their toddler books or labor over a nearly-shredded–from-erasing homework sheet or toil late into the night over an English paper they put off until the last minute, embrace the moment.  Do not show her, again.  Say: “You can figure that out,” give her a confident wink, and go to bed. 

Sleep well, Mama