The Loneliness Of Two-And-A-Half
What it means to be a SAHM as your children grow up.
Parenting Tips I’ve Learned This Week:
The Magic String: Ever since moving my older son to a toddler bed (which I will go into in my next newsletter), we had to lock the door so that he wouldn’t wander the house in the middle of the night. Despite the fact that he used to be in a crib which he couldn’t crawl out of, the door being locked scared him more. After coming up with a ton of different ideas to help ease his discomfort, I finally landed on something that really seemed to work! I decided to tie a long string to the door handle. I told him that I was going to close the door, but that I would stand outside the door and hold the other end of the string. For a few minutes, I spoke to him, pulled on the other end of the string, and encouraged him to feel comfortable with the door being shut. Then I told him I was going to be quiet now but I would still be holding the other end of the string if he got scared. Because it’s tied to the door handle, he feels resistance on the other end, so he thinks I’m always there. It’s the perfect comforting mechanism, and it has been a gamechanger.
If They’ll Try Anything, Give Them Everything: My younger son is 10 months old, and he is in that amazing baby stage where he will eat anything I give him. During this stage, I am reminding myself to give him a ton of different flavors and textures so that he is familiar with them! I know he will probably still go through a picky stage - almost all children do - but I want to be as proactive as possible to give him the best chance of having a broad palate.
Don’t Parent Out Of Resentment: I happened to have a bad week this week. I was out of sorts, angry, resentful — all those negative feelings that can essentially be summed up by saying, I was a grump. I lost my patience a few times and responded grumpily to my children, with less poise and understanding than I usually do. Even though I believe it’s important to give consequences and discipline as needed, I think it must be doled out as objectively as possible. Yet, this was the first time I found myself doing so without considering the effect. Even though I didn’t do anything I truly regret, I simply regretted the fact that I didn’t reflect before responding. So instead of parenting out of resentment, take a moment, step out of the room if possible, and reflect on the wonderful gift we have been given as SAHMs. Then re-enter the parenting scenario with a clearer head.
The Loneliness Of Two-And-A-Half
Recently, I visited a homeschool co-op. I am an Orthodox Jew, in case you weren’t aware, and so I was looking for a Jewish community of women choosing to educate their children themselves. After visiting the farm a few times (yes, it’s on an adorable plot of land with chickens and horses!), I realized something fascinating.
In my community, women often send their children to daycare at around three months old - that’s when maternity leave ends. But even if they don’t put their children into daycare, they put their children in school beginning at about 2 1/2. Now, technically school does not begin until the child turns 6. So why do parents send their children to school early? For a plethora of reasons: they feel that their child is “bored” at home; they want or need to return to work; they want to make sure their child is “socialized”; and often, parents want to guarantee their child a spot for first grade, so they are encouraged to enroll their children at a young age.
In another town where parents don’t enroll their children into school until they are older, I would just be considered a SAHM. I am not technically teaching my children anything extensive - we learn together as my son expresses interest in ideas, and we naturally begin learning letters, numbers, colors, and days of the week as the topics comes up. But because the community I live in starts school early, I am considered a homeschooling mom even though my son is only 2 1/2.
And I’ve begun to realize - 2 1/2 can be a lonely age, not for the child but for the mother.
When I visited the homeschool co-op, I realized how out of place I was. Most of the children there were far older than my son, and any children that were his age were only there because their older siblings were members. The babies were simply tagging along - so they were few and far between. I had been looking for a community of SAHM’s, and I began looking in the wrong place.
My son? He’s thriving. He’s happy as can be. The idea of him being bored is an anathema to me. We go out, socialize with people at the different museums and playgroups we frequent, and at home, we incorporate toy rotations with playthings that stimulate his imagination.
I, though, struggle to make a strong friendship with women embracing motherhood in the same way I have. I meet a lot of wonderful moms each time we venture out, but I only meet them once or twice. There isn’t a group that I meet up with regularly, and they don’t share my faith (which isn’t a real barrier, but it would be nice to have friends who have a similar outlook). My own community doesn’t have the infrastructure to support SAHMs with children over two. I have reached out to other mothers at the places we go, but we are all so spread out that it is difficult to maintain friendships “long distance.”
Before 2 1/2, I found that there were a ton of mommy-and-me classes that were wonderful for meeting other moms. There were a lot of programs targeting younger children and their caretakers as they spent time together in those early years. And at six years old, homeschooling begins. A community coalesces around the schooling of older kids and there’s no reason to be lonely. So what about those homeschooling families who do keep their younger children home before school? For larger families, the younger children will almost never attend a mommy-and-me class - they are along for the ride with the older siblings.
And that leaves those first-time moms who keep their children home with them for the early years before homeschooling. There are some classes, but the people who attend them in my part of town only know each other in the context of the class itself - they aren’t part of a regular community of moms who can connect and set up larger group playdates. It’s an odd problem and one I’m still trying to figure out a solution for. I wish I was a member of a community of SAHMs who were all in this together, because I know they exist and I only wish I were a part of one.
Being a SAHM is such a blessing and one I’m grateful for every day. I only wish that more mothers knew there was an option to keep their babies home with them even if they don’t choose to homeschool after six. But unfortunately, I think we are taught to put children in school early to free ourselves up to pursue our own “passions.” Or we aren’t taught how to be home with our children in those early years and end up passing the buck on to someone else. My goal is to encourage more and more women that they can be home with their babies - there are tools and techniques that will make it so doable for you, and not only doable, but enjoyable.
What do you think? Have you ever experienced this gap in the SAHM world? Or are you part of a SAHM friend group? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Thank you so much for addressing this issue! I have a 10 month old and am feeling this gap HARD! A lot of my friends are childfree or have serious infertility issues, so they are living entirely different lives than I'm living. A lot are working full time or part time so our schedules are totally different. A lot are not interested in homeschooling so they are in the 'wait until they're 5 and get your life back' mode. It's very hard to explain that having children isn't a 'phase' for me and that they'll be with me long term. I read Hannah's Children per your suggestion and it was so incredible to read stories of other women that are also doing this. It was a great balm to my soul!
Some women at my church suggested that we just go ahead and join the homeschool co-op there anyway even though my daughter is young. It's super awkward and I feel weird about it, but I'm just joining anyway and letting it be awkward. I don't know what else to do. I can't do this on my own, I need some women I can connect to, and I feel like this is the place of highest likelihood of finding them. I tried joining some play dates for the little kids but the value systems were so different between me and the women there that I just didn't want to keep going. My husband's Nana always says 'We're doing the best we can with what we have' and I feel like that's what I have to do in this season of life. Like it's an awkward time, and I'm in this weird limbo, but we'll be out of it sooner than we realize. I'm just so glad to have someone say it out loud because I've been feeling a bit crazy, thinking to myself like 'Where am I even supposed to be right now?'. Everyone else seems really established in their community and I feel like we're just hopping around from place to place.
We're Catholic though too, so there's a lot of support for homeschooling in the Catholic community, which will probably make it easier for me eventually. I'm so glad you shared that about being considered a homeschooling mom at 2 1/2 because of the difficulty of getting in to the Jewish schools. It isn't something I would have even known about honestly. This gap of 'my oldest isn't in school yet but we want to be involved in a homeschooling community to find families/friends with similar values' is really tough, and it sounds like it might be harder in different communities or even geographic regions.
I also wish there were more moms at home in general. It would be so much easier if there were, and a lot more fun for the kiddos. Thanks for what you're trying to do! There's a blog I really like called 'Like Mother Like Daughter' and it's written by a woman who has raised 7 kids, and it's basically homemaking/homeschooling/child raising tips and tricks. She's Catholic too, so some of her content is religious, but a ton of it is just super practical. I've emailed her questions before and she's really lovely. I wonder what she would say about this time period in raising children? I know she talks a lot about learning to be content at home, and using the time when the kids are really little to learn how to homeschool and get your house in order (while you still can). Maybe that's what we're supposed to be doing during this stage, really getting everything in order so that when homeschooling for real comes we're not just drowning? But it's certainly a suffering in itself (even though it's filled with joy). One thing the writer of that blog emailed me was that God saw my sacrifices and all I was doing and I just cried reading that. Maybe this loneliness is a sacrifice we can offer to God too, and then when we're all established in our communities later and meet the new mom with toddlers we can make sure they're very welcomed and as brought into our communities as they'd like to be.
I work 7 hours a day, two days a week, so I am not fully stay at home, but I relate to the loneliness. I currently have a 3 year old, 2 year old and expecting my third. I have joined several groups, but may of those seem as if they are directed to help mom's in the loneliness, not necessary to engage mom's and kids together. It's a chance to make friends and socialize with like minded women, but I don't think that kids are really getting much out of it. I don't know, maybe that's how it should be, but often times my kids act as if they miss me after these events, so it's hard to go since they are not child and mom focused, but more mom focused.
I struggle with this, because I think maybe I should be homeschooling already. But like you, we already do the basic things as they come up, and we read a ton everyday. I can't really picture my 3 year old boy sitting down and doing a lesson, like they would in daycare. And they are definitely not bored. It's definitely a new season to navigate.
I just think of it as a slow and unique time in life. You only have "only" little children once. Even if you keep having children, the older ones grow and eventually you will have little children and older children. The dynamic of only babies around is once in a lifetime. Perhaps it should require a little bit of loneliness on mama's side, so the kids get what they really need, and that's our time.