Shame on me, I have a tutor for my kids.
Shame on me because I cannot teach them myself, I am so inept as a mom.
I am useless! Useless. I don’t even deserve my children!
How incompetent am I!
Urgh! Scratch that!
My name is Melany (“Jinjin”) Heger, I have a seven year old son and a three year old daughter.
I have hired help. She is The Tutor.
I confess that I am not an effective teacher to my son.
I confess that I am bad, very, very bad. I am so incapable as a mother that I need to hire people to help me take care of my children and that wrong, very, very wrong.
I am so, so horrible that I should kill myself by starvation. I deserve my Anorexia. I am nothing, I am worth nothing, and so I should eat nothing.
Urgh! Scratch that again!
My name is Melany Heger. I stand firm with my conviction that I will be present with my son. Bodily and Emotionally Present.
I stand firm with my decision not get a yaya. I will not hire a maid to take care of my children. Until I am physically and psychologically able to do so, I will not ask anybody for help to take care of my most precious gems, RH (age 7) and AH (age 3).
Well, define “take care”…
There are many ways of taking care of children. Children have many needs. There are physical, emotional, psychological and social needs. Since I am a shrink, let’s go egghead on this and talk theory.
Are you familiar with Abraham Maslow? Let me do a little recap on a topic you probably encountered in Psychology 101. I am a fan of illustrating with real life examples. And since we are discussing my case, let’s put two and two together.
Presenting: Maslow’s infamous triangle, or the hierarchy of needs.
At the bottom of the triangle we have RH and AH’s Physical needs. These are about what food I give them, what comfort I provide terms of their housing arrangements, the kinds of clothes they wear. Do they have sufficient and nutritious food to eat? Are their rooms comfortable? Do they get regular baths? Do they have a good place to sleep? To play? To read? Check on all of that. I manage those things well.
Next rung is called Safety Needs. This refers to a child’s great need for predictability. Have you ever noticed how children fall easily into the routines of school? Children need that structure. Without structure, very young children feel unsafe. The trick here is to recognize individual needs vis a vis the structure. I learned this the hard way with RH. I gave him too rigid a structure at too young an age. I am happy to say I am threading this line with more confidence now with AH. Through live, real-time actual experience, I know now when to bend the rules a little and when to be stalwart. I give wiggle room sometimes, but I (try really hard) never to go back on my word. Even when my child is crying, I do not back down on my basic decision. (When you keep your kids from learning how to handle disappointments, you are shaping a spoiled brat.) I am the Parent, and they are my children. I am not their infallible God, but I am their firm (but kind) parent.
Note: Kids do not feel very safe when they are hurt physically by their parents/main caregiver. I do not spank my kids and I never ever will. I used to raise my hand with RH. But my clinical training kicked in. It is wrong.
Belonging and Love come are the next needs in Maslow’s hierarchy. Can anyone even question that? All children need to feel loved. (Heck, all of US need to feel loved.) Especially when young, children need to know from the bottomest bottom of their deepest deeps that they are loved and wanted. I did not have this as a child. I was the “ay saying, babae” (what a waste, she’s a girl) first-born child of a second generation Chinese-Filipino Immigrant. All my life, whenever I disappoint my dad, he sticks this out as a fact. “Ay saying babae. Your life would have been better if you were a first-born son.” In short, “You are a pathetic piece of shit. And you are, in your core a pathetic piece of shit. I never loved you, never wanted you.” If you drum out something like this constantly to a child, the child will grow up thinking she is unworthy of any kind of love. Nobody will ever love her, and if they do, they will just leave her in the end because the bottom line is, she is a piece of shit. Never, ever would I give that message to my kids. Never.
Self-esteem. Now folks, self-esteem is the mother of confidence. If your Belonging and Love needs were not fulfilled adequately, you will have little self-esteem. No self-respect reads to no respect for others. Think about it… how well you treat others is how well you treat yourself. Do you yell at your kids? Then maybe you should stop yelling at yourself for being a pathetic freak. (Because you are not a pathetic freak.) In my practice, I have repeatedly seen this scenario. Parent does not respect him/herself. Parent does not respect other people. Parent does not respect kids. Kids do not respect the parent.
Since Self-actualization is a need that emerges in middle age, I will skip it. Let’s stick to what I have been saying so far about my kids and their needs.
If I were an outsider and I evaluated myself as a provider, what I see is:
- Melany passes in flying colors in terms of fulfilling her children’s Safety Needs, Love and Belonging Needs and Self-esteem needs.
- However, she is weak in the following area: she does not know squat how to approach The Homework. When kids bring out the books and the assignments, she loses focus and strength. Either she avoids the task altogether or she goes on Dominatrix mode. “Do it now!” “Do as I say!” “Just finish the assignments so we can do fun stuff!” “Move it, move it.” Jinjin Heger is impatient. She knows her children need a gentler approach. They need a human being to coax them to finish their homework, but for the life of her, she turns into a maniac once it’s “Time to Study!”
Nota Bene: Melany Heger is a Psychologist. She “gets” kids. But she is not a Primary Education Teacher. Someone in that position has specialized skills and training. Jinjin Heger does not have the temperament for teaching small children. Faced with the task, her eyes glaze over and she leaves the room.
- To maximize the educational development of her children, Jinjin Heger needs help. It is strongly advised that she procures the help of an adult who is responsive to her children’s needs when they are studying.
So where is the shame of hiring a tutor coming from? It’s from that place in my heart that wants TO HAVE IT ALL. No, it is from the place in my EGO to want to do it all. Wait, it’s from the place in my BRAIN that thinks I am all my children need and no more.
Hmmmph. I am just as human as another mother. I get tired, I get sick, and sometimes I go ballistic. If I do not want my children to be the target of my violence, then I have to ask for help. I cannot be their all even if I want to.
Oh my, my pride is bruised.
Accepting help is hard for me. But, I am in a relationship, relationships are two-sided. This means, it is not always about me, and it is not always about them. Relationships with kids are like that. I have to learn moderation; I have to balance. Parenting involves pakiramdaman (being empathic), nerves of steel and logical thinking. No one should be able to do it all alone. Why make myself an exception?
So here I am with my stance. No yayas (nannies/maids), but I have an ally. She is the Tutor and she is wonderful. She does what she does with ease. If I force myself, I can do what she does too. But it will take so much of my time and energy that I will be bitter and vengeful to my kids, some way or the other. I will regret it. I will go insane doing it.
Millions of people have maids and feel Ok about it. I don’t. I am not one of those people. I don’t judge them, and I never will. Because a few mothers like me feel good hiring tutors. When it’s “Time to Study!” we don’t feel dread, we go, “Yipee!”
When the Tutor comes, I do the laundry, vacuum, wash the dishes, and fix dinner for the kids. Some people will dodge these tasks, but not me.
I Love Housechores! (Seriously.) Well, whadda ya think? I’m Obsessive-Compulsive, I mean, a recovering Anorexic. These disorders are highly related, but let’s leave that for another day.
I get my kicks scouring bathroom walls and mopping floors. In my opinion, a maid will never do better than me. Because it is my home, and this is my house and these are my kids age 7 and 3. I will never do what The Tutor does most excellently. But I can guide the psychological development of my kids. That is my role.
I am starting to feel good about the Tutor. So, no more “Shame on Me”.
