A few days ago I received a WhatsApp from a person who asked me: “Can I ask you a strange question? I would like to know your opinion…".
Me, who always wants strange questions and who loves to give my opinion (as you may have already noticed) answered: “Sure mana, shoot”.
The question, in summary, was: “Do you think I should have another child? I have two and I'm wondering if I should have a third”.
Me: “Why?”
She: “In case something happens in life that doesn't leave just one (omaigod!), in case a big family is better, in case siblings are the best gift, in case, in case, in case … So I am doing a mini market study to find out the opinion and experience of other people who have more or less children and to be able to decide”.
I clarify that I don't know this person that well, for which I am infinitely grateful for the trust and also that the person in question gave me their authorization to talk about this today.
From there we had a conversation where many points came up that I thought were worth discussing with you and, of course, I also "exercised" with her.
There you go...
The first thing I asked her was: Do you want to have another child?
Because it seems to me that before anything else, the question is: do I feel like doing this? Because it turns out that, unlike many things, a child is not disposable and the decision you make will have to be assumed for the rest of your life.
The second question was: Are you willing and able to give that third child what you gave the other two in terms of time, attention, patience, resources and everything else?
Those were the two questions I asked myself when it was time to decide if we kept two or wanted one more. And the reason why we decided that not one more was precisely that: we no longer had to be those parents 100% present in the first years, nor to live without sleep, nor to leave what was left of our backs in the process. Nor of everything else.
We raise our children ourselves. The Sponsor and me. Together. No one bathed, changed, slept, dressed or woke up 400 million times a night more than him and me (and maybe a couple of relatives and very, very SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO''OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO''OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO''OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo in there to be woken up with four hundred million times a night more than him and me, not to mention the 14 months that I breastfed each one of them on demand and the hoooras of accompanying them to discover the world. Or the wool they cost. Or the shit that it is to educate and the patience that it requires and that to me it is not like it is given to me in a pot.
Our decision was no.
Do I regret it?
No.
Yeah.
No, because I still think that they already caught me tired and my body and my tolerance no longer gave of themselves. Yes, because I think that children always multiply love and that coming from a family of only two (my sister and I) I would have liked to know what one more was like and because yes, indeed, siblings are the best gift for to face life.
What surprised me a lot in this whole WhatsApp conversation was that the decision to have another child, for her also implied a whole level of needs and requirements to meet that when it was my turn to decide, fortunately they did not exist.
I quote her when she said “now to have children you need a series of things that you didn't need before, such as the sleep coach, the coach to make them eat better, the bonding coach, parties hyper-produced, the trip to Disney at 3 years old” and all the etceteras that fit here.
And that's where I want to go...
“Ne-ce-si-tas?”
Who said you need all that!?
I'm going to tell you who: the fucking consumer society and the train of the unstoppable sucker for belonging and thinking that if we don't do things the way others do then we're doing them wrong.
🙄
Let's see...
It is evident that if one needs help it is worth seeking help for a specific issue and bless God there are people who can guide us and help us out of a rut.
Yes.
But that doesn't mean we HAVE to hire everyone for everything or every child!
What there is is an immense offer in the face of a very clear need and a gigantic lack of connection with something that for millions of years was what made us not need so many things: our internal voice, that much mentioned and now so ignored which is called: maternal instinct.
We are sooooo worried about checking off everyone else's to-do list that we have forgotten to listen to us and our tribes. Children have been raised for millennia by their mothers and grandmothers and friends and aunts and now we need specialists! And that is a great tragedy because we are pretending to have formatted children.
#allwrong
Something that greatly distressed this girl (who I loved that she was violated like this) was: “I want to give them the best and now giving them the best implies spending a fortune continuously so as not to leave them without all that”.
And that seems to me the most important point when deciding to have children. One two. Five... that we have forgotten that the best thing we can give to a child is ourselves.
Time. Ears. Eyes. Songs. Games. Patience. Arms. And a lot of sleepless nights.
What our children need from us is attention! And a mother connected to herself who knows how to listen to herself and who understands that no one, no one!, knows her son better than her.
That one is not the same mother for all her children because each one is different and therefore needs a different mother, and that is okay.
I have nothing against all the services that exist in this regard (before they pounce on me) as long as we understand that we do not need them by default, but only in case we really are, ourselves or our children, stuck with something.
What we need is to be well informed about the issues and moments of our children, read books, take courses and ask for advice, as long as we don't turn off our inner voice and stop listening to it, but above all exercising.
To be “better moms” what we need is more practice and less theory. Spot.
All the certificates in the world are useless if you are not there as often as you can be, in the loop.
In hugs. On sleepless nights. The hours of assembling and disarming, dressing and undressing, playing and collecting. Put limits. Educate. Hope they learn to dress themselves and not throw away half their food by learning to hold a spoon.
If I were to tell you about the hooooers my sister spent with my favorite nephew in what Maria Montessori (universal sensei) calls a “sensitive period” (which is when the child is “obsessed” with something because something is learning and instead of scolding, suspending, or forbidding what he is doing, you have to allow him to let what he is doing incessantly help him build whatever his brain is building when doing it) in which the kid spent hours (and probably months) in opening and closing doors and bars... hoooooraaaa... and there they were both: he opening and closing, she observing and allowing.
I also followed the 14-year-old for months in his tireless search to collect all the sticks in the world (which he treasured in the drawer under his bed until he was 10 years old) or walking behind the garbage truck in the neighborhood where there was her sister's school, where we were waiting for her to come out (which, by the way, was a learning experience…the processes and logistics of a garbage truck are very impressive). And I spent hours watching the 17-year-old give machincuepas in the air when her obsession with Olympic gymnastics implied the need to have a very attentive public (did you see mom, did you see?).
What children need is time.
And presence.
Don't rush. Not a hundred experts. Not even moms who think that since they have already checked all the requirements they may not be, or be, but glued to the phone without paying the slightest attention to them.
Time.
And I have news for you: no matter how many courses you pay for and experts you hire, the ONLY way to establish a bond with your children is by bonding with them!
Being.
And being with quality because spending all day watching Instagram doesn't count.
You have to connect.
There are moms who work all day and have a much deeper bond because when they are there, they are there! And that's the only recipe that works: being present in the present moment.
So whether or not you, like this woman, are thinking about having a child, my answer is bluntly this:
Stop running polls and treating it like a business decision. It is a decision of the heart and dedication, the rest is arranged and always accommodates. The question is whether we want to give that person a mother or simply a manager of his life.
To be brutally honest, having a child is always going to mean being a bit of an asshole because if we really thought about all the implications, the responsibility, the work, and the money it's going to cost us, I'm sure we'd never have it! much less we would start over!
What happens is that our hearts win. And love. Because nothing, ever, will make us feel what it feels like for a son, nor the satisfaction that it is to put on the most Olympic shit in the universe in exchange for a little hand inside ours.
So what you really have to think about, if it's a matter of deciding, is if what you're willing to give her, to give her the best, is yourself.
That's all children need.
Don't be too ballsy. Don't even have children to pigeon. Have those who want to attend (really) and don't have if you don't want to have (it's not egg and they are a huge piece of shit).
Listen to yourselves more and if you have them... lie down more often to play on the floor with them.
Don't miss the opportunity to meet and enjoy your children under the pressure that “that's what it takes now” or that what you have to give them are things or trips to Disney (the kind they won't go to). agree) or parties that look like a six-ring circus (and cost them half their monthly income just to post on their Instagram and look good).
The better you know your children, the less need for help they will need and the more rewards they will get. It's the best paying job, even if sometimes they pee in your face.
Experts are for emergencies.
For daily life, what they need is their mom (and of course their dad, don't think they've already saved themselves, gentlemen!).
Everything else, they can, almost always... send to hell.
Do it.
PS. If you want to do yourself and your children a favor, read María Montessori, a maximum genius, visionary and pioneer in that we are forming independent adults, not (badly) educating little children. Reading it undoubtedly marked my way of growing my children and understanding the magnitude of the processes and the reasons for each stage, in order to help them and help me not to pull my hair (so much) in the process. These two are for me the essential books for dads, moms and grandparents because it's never too late to learn how to do it better:
The Absorbing Mind
The secret of childhood
If you want to know my opinion of children's parties, click here.
Another text by the author: The part we haven't understood