Fostering Appreciation In Children
by Nelia Odom
"Spaghetti again! I don't want spaghetti!" whines my son. It is the
end of a long day, and we are all tired. Time is short, and it is all I can
do to reheat the spaghetti left over from the night before. "Well, we're
having garlic bread and salad, too," I offer. "No, not that either," he pouts.
My daughter flounces into the kitchen with a new complaint. She has
dirtied her clothing on the playground and is demanding a fresh outfit at
6:00 p.m. I try to reason with her. It is too late in the day for clean clothes;
two outfits a day make too much laundry; she will be going to bed soon anyway.
But she, fastidious about her appearance, is adamant. "I don't want to wear
this anymore," she says of the lovely dress her grandmother sent her. "I
hate this old dress!"
How do these children manage to defeat me so by the end of the day?
I think that I am a fairly good cook, but my son is refusing to grant me
that. I look at my daughter and see a pretty child who is naturally a bit
soiled at the end of a hard day's play. But she is glaring at me as if I
am a monster for declining to make unnecessary laundry for myself. By the
time my husband walks in the door, I am convinced that I am wasting my time
in this kitchen, that I have accomplished nothing of value during the day,
and that I must be deficient as a mother anyway for raising such appallingly
ungrateful children.
My husband greets me with a cheerful "Hi, there!" and a kiss.
I counter with, "You forgot to take out the garbage this morning,
and all the cans are full."
"Oh," he looks deflated. "Sorry."
Now I am sorry too and my self-esteem takes another plunge. Bad enough
to be a lousy mother without also being a disgruntled wife. I apologize to
my husband.
"Had a long day?" he asks sympathetically.
"It's these kids," I tell him. "They just don't appreciate me."
Appreciation
Everybody craves it but often we treat it as a scarce commodity, hoarding
it to ourselves. It doesn't take the mother at home long to realize how much
our culture undervalues her contribution to society. There is plenty of
recognition for the achievements of the career woman, but seemingly little
appreciation left over for the mother raising her own children at home. If
her self-esteem suffers from receiving no public affirmation of her worth,
the point is only driven home at those times when even her children fail
to respond with thanks.
Must this be the case? Is being taken for granted by our children
simply an occupational hazard? My husband still can hear his own mother's
repeated threat, "Just wait until you have children of your own!" And while
it is certainly true that finally having children of our own enhances and
renews our appreciation for our parents, must we really wait until we are
grandparents before we receive recognition from our children?
Although such a strategy eventually may work in the majority of cases,
it is a luxury that the mother at home today simply cannot afford. I find
that when my children are especially ungrateful, it is just too destructive
to the climate I work so hard to create in our home. It is not only that
their criticisms and complaints are hard on me. My children's failure to
appreciate the worth of my work for our family is bad for them, too. When
I allow them to take me for granted, I give them a false picture of what
work is.
Serious work is never without value, and mothering children is serious
work. It requires all that we have -- physical stamina, mental acuity, and
spiritual sensitivity. I do not mean to suggest that our children do not
deserve our best efforts, that they must somehow purchase our attentions
with gratitude. Like many women today, I am at home because I feel that my
children are entitled to a secure home, to a stimulating environment, to
nutritious meals and well-planned days, and to hours and hours of my time.
But I also know that these things will mean less to them if they never come
to realize that it takes work to produce these things, intangible though
they sometimes are.
Of course, work takes many forms. All parents labor on behalf of their
children, and all parents can begin to teach their children, while they are
young, to appreciate this work. But the mother at home is in an especially
advantageous position to do so for she has her children with her in her
workplace. A young child can observe his mother about her tasks. He can see
that many of the things she does are for him. But he cannot observe an absent
working parent, nor does he readily understand the relationship between the
parent's work, the money which that work earns, and the material things which
that money purchases for him. I want my children to learn to recognize the
means as well as the end, to value the process as well as the product. My
challenge as a mother at home is to illustrate for my children the relationship
between what I do as a person and what we have as a family.
I hadn't yet articulated these beliefs when we grumpily sat down that
night to our belated meal of leftover spaghetti, but I knew that we needed
to make some changes. As the meal took the edge off our hunger and fatigue,
our dispositions improved and our conversation lightened. "Thanks for dinner,"
my husband said casually as we finished. "Good dinner, Mom," piped my son.
"Thank you, Mommy, for cooking it for us," added my daughter, never one to
be outdone. I was amazed. Gratified, too, but primarily amazed at this utter
reversal of their earlier attitudes. What had happened? Could such an offhand
expression of appreciation have elicited appreciative feelings all around?
Was it really such a simple thing as that?
I had to find out, so in the weeks that followed I made a conscious
effort to express my appreciation to my husband in front of the children.
Especially in families where the roles are more or less traditional, it is
important that we not take one another's work for granted. And so I said
"Thank you," Thank you for mowing the lawn, for fixing the faucet, for offering
to go to the store. Thank you for bathing the kids, for reading to them,
for helping them to pick up their toys. My husband, whose personality has
always been more naturally gracious than mine, played along beautifully.
I was thanked for meals, for freshly ironed shirts, for errands run to the
bank and the drugstore and the cleaner's. And of course the kids caught on!
Soon they were thanking me for driving them to their swimming lesson, for
inviting their playmates over, for taking them to the park. My son thanked
me effusively and spontaneously for "that very good birthday party" that
I gave him. I began to overhear them saying "thank you" to each other!
Why should this have been such a revelation to me? I had realized
since they were infants that children naturally imitate their parents. But
I never had accepted, until I saw it reflected in my children's ungrateful
behavior, how blindly I sometimes deviate from my own values, and how easy
it is to expect more from my children than I demand of myself.
Hearing my children begin to express gratitude encouraged me so much
that I plunged ahead with another experiment. I was happy that they could
see the value of my work, but I also wanted them to experience some of the
responsibility of it. Assigning and enforcing chores always has struck me
as a real burden; it has always seemed easier to do things myself. Nonetheless,
we are working now at developing certain responsibilities for each child.
My five-year-old daughter is to make her bed and keep the porch swept. My
four-year-old son is to help set and clear the table. They are both responsible
for their books and toys and for knowing the locations at all times of their
shoes and jackets. I wish this were as easy as teaching them to say "thank
you," but I have to admit that I often meet real resistance here. Yet even
as we struggle to work things out, the children gain an understanding that
running a household and keeping things nice for everyone takes effort, that
things don't just happen. When they do well, the satisfaction of a job well
done is theirs, and satisfaction is both my gift to them and their well-earned
due.
Yes, of course there are still times when we all forget ourselves,
when in a state of fatigue or hunger, or a simple fit of pique, one of us
says something unbearably rude or a task is defiantly left undone. But I
know that when these things happen, we are not right back where we started.
We all know that Mom's work is real work, that sometimes it is a joy and
sometimes it is a pain, but it is always worth something.
I've realized, as the founders of Mothers At Home point out in their
book What's A Smart Woman Like You Doing At Home?, that putting my family
first does not permit me to do my children the disservice of allowing them
to put me last. We're all learning that in a family everybody has work to
do, according to his or her abilities, and that the challenge lies in remembering
to give credit where credit is due.
Mothers At Home is a national nonproft organization devoted to the support of mothers who choose (or would like to choose) to stay at home to nurture their families. The above article appeared in their monthly publication and is reprinted with their permission. For more information about Mothers at Home, visit them at their web site: www.mah.org
