Praying My Way to Nursery Schoolby Chana Weisberg (Jerusalem)
A few months ago, a friend was telling me how she has no idea how mothers survive without prayer. And for me also, prayer has proven itself to be an incredibly useful tool. At least once a day, when the kids are in a big fight, or someone’s being impossibly stubborn, or I generally have absolutely no idea what I am supposed to do next, I stop, close my eyes, take a deep breath, and pray that G-d will help me out of the abyss of a pit I have dug myself into. Who knows? Maybe this is just a Jewish mother’s version of Benjamin Franklin’s count to ten before speaking when you’re angry trick—but whether it’s just that it calms me down, or that G-d really intervenes to show me just the right way to lift myself back up to level ground—in any case I do find that it works extremely well. Day after day, I have found that when I put my problems in G-d’s hands, it works mothering miracles. The reason I’m writing about all of this is that today I had a terrible morning with my kids that made me cry and despair of my abilities as a mother. The morning was a bit rocky from the very beginning. Tiferet—who, in addition to being adorable and having a heart of gold is also as stubborn as well, um, a three-year-old—couldn’t find anything she wanted to wear. The problem was that she only agrees to wear clothing that matches my clothing (imagine what a relief it was to discover this after months and months of her apparently random refusals to put on any clothing I offered) and this morning I was wearing a red skirt, and the only skirts we have for her are denim and light green. Oy! A red dress? No way! A blue skirt with red flowers? You’ve got to be kidding! I actually considered changing my clothes, but maintaining my last remaining ounce of maternal pride, I called in reinforcements in the form of my no-longer-sleeping husband, and he figured out how to get her dressed. Breakfast went well, and I thought we were on the right track. My parenting class teacher, Rebbetzin Talya Helfer, mentioned recently that pretty much the most important thing we do all day is get the kids off to school in a good mood, even though this is also, in my limited experience, just about the hardest thing we do the whole day. To clarify, getting them off to school isn’t so incredibly hard, but managing to get them to school in a good mood is. Anyway, I thought we were doing just fine, leaving the house earlier than we have ever left—at 7:30 A.M., just in time for 7:45 opening time. I was pretty proud of my new decision to go to bed and wake up an hour earlier, and how that was helping me to get my kids off with so much newfound joy and efficiency. And then, Tiferet declared that she was going to push the baby in her carriage all the way to nursery school located about a mile away. A year of wasted mornings flashed before my eyes when she said that, since when she pushes the baby, it takes about three times longer than when I do it. I knew I needed to take a firm stand to save my few free hours to work in the mornings. I told her, “Great, you push until the street, and then Eema will do it.” That worked fine until we got to the street, and I said, “Great job! Now Eema does it so we get to nursery school on time.” And then Tiferet pulled her sit-down-in-the-middle-of-the-sidewalk-and-won’t-budge-in-protest trick. My other kids respond well to run-of-the-mill encouragements to get them out of behavioral dead ends and blackouts—a little sticker placed on their shirt, a promise to write a note for their teacher about how good they had been earlier, a cookie, a bit of active listening, or a well-placed “You look angry” work like a charm. My other kids let me off easy, but my Tiferet’s not like that. When she sits down and won’t move, there is absolutely nothing I can do... To subscribe or order back issues, visit the NJP Shop.
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