Mama, Butter Your Bread, Because Baby Will Keep
Feeling guilt?
Here’s your permission.
Mama, butter your bread. Sweep the floor.
Because, contrary to the popular poem,
baby will keep and be better for the structure.
There’s so much pressure when you’re a parent.
So much propaganda out there about what’s good for baby and
what you should never do and the stuff you have to do to be a good mom.
So. Much. Pressure.
You especially feel it if you’re a first-time mom.
You want everything perfect for baby. There’s the fear of scarring fragile little psyches by treating them wrong.
You want to be a spiritual mom, and raise your children to love God.
And then there’s the poem that every mother-in-law and grandmother has helpfully recited:
rock your baby, because time passes so fast, and babies don’t wait to grow up.
And, also: don’t try to do all the things; be the mom who plays with her children.
Mama, butter your bread.
Do the dishes. Sweep the floor.
If baby feels structure in your life, that other things are important besides “me, me, me,” he will be a better little person.
There is a place for organization and freedom from chaos.
The toys need to be put away sometimes; naptime is at 1:00 pm; mama makes dinner at 5:00 pm.
Is that you? Do you do better with structure? Do you feel distress and anxiety if you don’t have structure?
If you are that person, chances are your child will be, too.
And of course, a schedule will get disrupted. That’s life, and flexibility is good.
But I hereby give you permission, and I believe the Bible backs this up,
to give your child the chance to play his own way, on his own time.
So Mama, butter your bread and sweep the floor.
Because children actually thrive better without helicopter parents.
How much bread can you butter
how many spa days for you and days at the sitters for them,
and how much cleaning and scrubbing and dusting can you do
before you neglect a child?
When our children were little, like twenty-five years ago ( :/ ), I knew a mom who always managed to make me feel guilty. She was always taking her children to the library, to the zoo, to the park. She stressed that children needed to have a say in their own life. They shouldn’t be made to work as hard as she had to when she was young. She grew up in a super-structured home with a workaholic mom, and she was determined her children would enjoy life.
And I left her presence feeling less than.
I made my children make their beds and empty the dishwasher. Not on their own time. On mine. Didn’t go out and throw the football with my boys. I didn’t have daily tea parties with my daughter.
There was always the guilt that I buttered my own bread too much. I didn’t rock my babies enough. Cobwebs and dishes were too important to me.
Finally, the day came when I realized I had to be me; I couldn’t live her life, and she couldn’t live mine.
God created me and He created her.
And as the years unfolded, we each realized things we somehow did right, and what we maybe did wrong.
The important thing to remember now, though,
is that we did the best we knew how at the time.
YOU… new mom…
mom of babies…
mom of school age children and babies…
YOU ARE ENOUGH.
You are doing the best you know how,
and that is amazing and enough.
Find more posts about developing our spiritual hearts here, here and here.
Find posts for developing baby’s life here, or here.
“
Babies Don’t Keep
Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing, make up the bed,
Sew on a button and butter the bread.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.
Oh, I’ve grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo
The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo
Look! Aren’t his eyes the most wonderful hue?
Lullabye, rockaby lullabye loo.
The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
But children grow up as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.
“
