MamaBlogga

My sister came across this article on cognitive development and just knew I’d love it. She’s right, because child psychiatrists and neuroscientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that:

School-age children whose mothers nurtured them early in life have brains with a larger hippocampus, a key structure important to learning, memory and response to stress.

Even in a very limited setting—all the nurturing was done at the lab, and they didn’t follow the parents and children home—they were able to observe the difference between children whose parents supported them and those who didn’t:

As part of the initial study, the children were closely observed and videotaped interacting with a parent, almost always a mother, as the parent was completing a required task, and the child was asked to wait to open an attractive gift. How much or how little the parent was able to support and nurture the child in this stressful circumstance — which was designed to approximate the stresses of daily parenting — was evaluated by raters who knew nothing about the child’s health or the parent’s temperament.

“It’s very objective,” says Luby, professor of child psychiatry. “Whether a parent was considered a nurturer was not based on that parent’s own self-assessment. Rather, it was based on their behavior and the extent to which they nurtured their child under these challenging conditions.”

The difference? Almost 10% in the size of the hippocampus.

That’s enough to make me worried I’m not nurturing enough .

What do you think? What other influences do moms have on minds?

When I was a teenager, in a church lesson, the teacher once defined sacrifice as “giving up something good for something better.”

I guess that’s one way of looking at it, but that definition is so oversimplified as to be ridiculous. In fact, I believe there were candy bars involved in the object lesson—seriously, is it really a “sacrifice” to give up a few Hershey’s Kisses for a big Symphony bar? That scarcely reaches the definition of “opportunity cost,” let alone “sacrifice.”

Last month, I set myself a bunch of goals and deadlines on the novel I was revising, and I was falling behind on all my targets. However, I’d also set a goal to go to the temple. Much as I didn’t want to (and subconsciously resisted, giving myself a late start and really messing with my schedule for the rest of the day), I finally got myself out of the door and off to worship.

As I sat inside the beautiful peace of the temple, I recalled how blessed I am to live close to a temple. Growing up in North Carolina, our nearest LDS temple was in Washington, D.C.—a 5+ hour drive, each way. We went once, maybe twice, a year. When I was a teenager, they built a temple about 30 minutes from my parents’ house—and suddenly it wasn’t as much of a sacrifice to attend. These days, I live about the same distance from a temple.

Across the world, many other people make even greater sacrifices than 10 hours in the car, two nights in a hotel, and a weekend of their time to attend the temple and receive the blessings and ordinances there. Sometimes, living in the US with dozens of temples around, it hardly feels like a sacrifice to take a couple hours a month to serve and worship in the temple.

But that day, as I tried to focus not on all the tasks and self-imposed deadlines but on the Holy Spirit around me, I came up with a better definition of sacrifice:

Sacrifice is giving up something you want for something you know is more important.

That day I’d given up something I wanted—to work on a novel that I was really enjoying and wanted to make better—for something I knew was more important. It might not feel like a sacrifice to travel less than an hour round trip, but it’s still a sacrifice to take time out of what I want to do and serve God instead.

And then I realized that was what motherhood is. Motherhood is all about sacrifice: giving up many things that I might want now (a career [sort of], full control of my time, a cleaner house, less laundry, etc., etc.) for something I know is far more important, something that will bring me more joy and will contribute to the world in the most significant way I can—raising good people to lead the next generation.

And that sacrifice, though it’s still hard to make sometimes, is a privilege.

What do you think? How is motherhood a sacrifice for you? How do you define sacrifice?

Photo credit: Washington, D.C., LDS Temple by Richard Rogers

When I was called as Primary (children’s Sunday school) president in October 2010, I met with the outgoing president. She was very sad to be leaving Primary.

I vowed (silently) that that wouldn’t be me. I didn’t want a big calling right then, with my husband in the bishopric and my kids being 4, 2, and 5 months and already having to struggle through Sunday meetings with little to no help because of Ryan’s responsibilities—and I was pretty stunned to be working in Primary. For perspective, my mom has had a lot of “big” callings on the ward (local) and stake (larger area, cf. diocese) level—but she never had a calling in Primary until a couple years ago. We didn’t do Primary: we did Young Women (12-18 year olds) and Relief Society (adults). Plus, couldn’t I get away from my kids for two hours a week???

Apparently, I was wrong—on all counts. Yesterday I was officially released. It was just time, apparently. The Lord had decided I was finished.

When the Bishop told me last week that I would be released this week, I was pretty shocked—surprised to be released, and surprised at how it felt to know it was coming to an end.

I wanted to stay in Primary. I wanted to be there for the funny things my children say—and they say a lot. I wanted to be there to watch all the kids learn and grow, to see the new 3-year-olds discover the fun of Primary, to stanch the constant turnover in the 30+ positions under our purview. (Ha. This never happens. We did what we could to turn over a full staff.)

When I thought about it this week, I wanted to cry. I expected to on Sunday (yesterday). I didn’t even feel the relief until half an hour before church. When Ryan called my name to stand for my vote of thanks (the custom when releasing people from positions of responsibility in the church), he expected me to cry. (I held it together just fine.)

It wasn’t a long time, but it felt like the end an era to me. It won’t be the same to go to church and not get to see my older two participating in their lessons. And I will miss it. I will miss them—most of all, my own children.

What do you know? I did love Primary.

I think every mom has had a “veteran” mom—usually an empty nester, with grandkids—pat her on the hand and command her to cherish these times, lament how much they miss the dirty handprints on the windows they just washed, and/or wax nostalgic on how wonderful it was to wake up every two hours with an infant. (Only slightly exaggerating on the last one.)

To which moms in the throes of motherhood pretty much think, “REALLY?!?!”

I like to think that memory has glossed over how difficult raising children is—I’m just shy of six years in with my first, and there are already many difficult periods in our lives that have been covered with the benignant mists of time.

Thank heaven. Today is hard enough as it is; can you imagine if all the past trials we’ve endured came crashing down on us whenever we thought about them?

So maybe one day, I’ll be able to look back and say that I enjoyed it—overall. I hope I never forget how hard it was—or at the very least, that it was hard. Because it is hard and I’m not going to pretend like it’s not.

But I think Glennon at Momastery said it much better:

I think parenting young children (and old ones, I’ve heard) is a little like climbing Mount Everest. Brave, adventurous souls try it because they’ve heard there’s magic in the climb. They try because they believe that finishing, or even attempting the climb are impressive accomplishments. They try because during the climb, if they allow themselves to pause and lift their eyes and minds from the pain and drudgery, the views are breathtaking. They try because even though it hurts and it’s hard, there are moments that make it worth the hard. These moments are so intense and unique that many people who reach the top start planning, almost immediately, to climb again. Even though any climber will tell you that  most of the climb is treacherous, exhausting, killer. That they literally cried most of the way up.

And so I think that if there were people stationed, say, every thirty feet along Mount Everest yelling to the climbers – “ARE YOU ENJOYING YOURSELF!? IF NOT, YOU SHOULD BE! ONE DAY YOU’LL BE SORRY YOU DIDN’T!” TRUST US!! IT’LL BE OVER TOO SOON! CARPE DIEM!”  - those well-meaning, nostalgic cheerleaders might be physically thrown from the mountain.

If you have somehow missed “Don’t Carpe Diem,” you have to fix that. Seriously. Now. If you have ever been tempted to bodily harm a well-meaning old lady who tells you how she’d give anything to have her little babies back (or maybe just sic your babies on her), if you’ve ever struggled with perspective and wondering how, exactly, changing so many diapers was suppose to be the ennobling, important calling you’re searching for, if you just need to be reminded that motherhood is worth it—go read it.

Photo by Ed Yourdon

In case you missed it, I’m a writer. (Shameless plug: I can now say “my book is coming out next year”!) So I was instantly drawn to a guest post by a fellow forthcoming-in-2013 author on the Power of Moms yesterday. I was so drawn to it, in fact, that I tracked down the author’s blog and discovered that we’ll be sharing a publisher (awesome!).

But even more awesome was her essay. I have been thinking about this very topic a lot. As a writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about imaginary people with imaginary problems who live their imaginary lives all in my head. Yes, it does get crowded. So crowded that I spend a good deal of time thinking about what I need to do for this story, how I’ll plot out that story, how I’ll edit another story—even when I have three flesh-and-blood (albeit quite small) people right here in front of me. Shouting at me. Tugging on me. They’re hard to forget, and yet somehow, sometimes, I do.

One of the things that astounded me as a new mother was how much my baby could need me. And he wasn’t one of those children who instantly quiets in the arms of his mother. (The opposite: he was pretty quiet in general, unless he was starving, and getting near his mommy at those times meant he was going to eat soon, SO HURRY IT UP!!)

Somehow, this little lump of a human, less expressive than our house cat, needed me all the time. For eating ever 90 minutes, yes, but somehow even then, I felt the emotional draw of his utter dependence.

My children aren’t quite so dependent on me these days—they’ve discovered the refrigerator—but still, the one thing they need the most from me isn’t games or toys or food or stimulation. What they need most from me . . . is me.

So one of the things I’m going to try to focus on this year is being more mindful of the present. We spend so much of our lives filtering our existence. I want to look up from my camera and my computer and into the eyes of my children. I might even get off the couch.

And hopefully, I’ll be able to come to the same conclusion as Jenny has:

Often days, even weeks, go by without writing a single word. Days that are full of not just the routine maintenance and care of a home and family, but with homework helping, piano teaching, baby building, book reading, game playing, story listening and many other rich and rewarding things that I’m simply not willing to give up. I will not give them up because I want to be present in my children’s lives; and because I know that in the grand scheme of things, my children, not the number of books I’ve published, will be my greatest prize.

This raising of a family is God’s work. I know this. I feel it in my heart, in my bones, and even in the very words that I write. I do not think it coincidental that those moments that have brought me closest to God are moments I’ve experienced as a mother. Writing is rewarding in its own right, but mothering? Mothering is sanctifying.

Amen.

How do you focus on the present? (Or how do you dream and wish your life away?)

At Thanksgiving (in America), we remember our many blessings. Usually, we focus on big ones: family, freedom, upcoming books. But remembering the little things is important too, and not just on an annual day of thanks.

In this year’s General Relief Society Meeting, Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf spoke about things that we need to remember, using the image of a forget-me-not flower as a symbol. One of the things we need to remember, he says, is to focus on the wonderful parts of our life:

The lesson here is that if we spend our days waiting for fabulous roses, we could miss the beauty and wonder of the tiny forget-me-nots that are all around us.

This is not to say that we should abandon hope or temper our goals. Never stop striving for the best that is within you. Never stop hoping for all of the righteous desires of your heart. But don’t close your eyes and hearts to the simple and elegant beauties of each day’s ordinary moments that make up a rich, well-lived life.

The happiest people I know are not those who find their golden ticket; they are those who, while in pursuit of worthy goals, discover and treasure the beauty and sweetness of the everyday moments. They are the ones who, thread by daily thread, weave a tapestry of gratitude and wonder throughout their lives. These are they who are truly happy.

What do you think? How do you forget not the beauty and sweetness of today?

Photo by KH1234567890