Reduce Stress. Listen to your Children.

by: Pauline Mascarenhas

In today’s fast-paced world, women can cave into stress too easily, but as Flourish reader Pauline learns from her children, sometimes the simplest reasoning for not doing a chore, makes the most sense.

"Make each day useful and cheerful and prove that you know the worth of time by employing it well.  Then youth will be happy, old age without regret and life a beautiful success." - Louisa May Alcott, Author (1832-1888)

During the past five or six decades women have tried hard to juggle multiple roles – career, wife, mother, to name but a few.

Women in the 20th century more often than not had a job until they got married and then swapped it for the role of a wife and mother.  They also had assistance with performing these roles, with maids, grandparents, aunts, etc.  However, they had very little autonomy or freedom.  They literally went from being under the roof of parents to being under the roof of their husband.

This changed in the 21st Century.  Women became better educated, got better jobs (earning good incomes) and of course became more independent.  More importantly, they did not want to give up this hard-earned freedom when they got married and had children.  And of course in modern times it is often necessary to have two incomes to manage the household budget.

Now we have women who are trying to be ‘superwomen’, handling a demanding job or career and also trying to do everything at home perfectly.  I fell into this category not because I was a ‘career’ woman per se, but because we needed the money, pure and simple.  So, here I was from just going to work, coming home and pleasing myself what I ate or drank, or how much housework I did or did not do, to having to be responsible for others – a husband and then children.

Cooking and housework was not something I wanted to do or derived any satisfaction from doing.  But I felt that since I was the female in the home, these were my responsibility and I had to do them. 

In addition, I had been brainwashed with ideas like the kitchen must be cleaned daily, the house had to be vacuumed at least once a week, the bathroom and toilets had to be cleaned once a week, etc.  It felt as if I would fail as a women if these chores were not completed according to schedule.  For the first few years of my married life I did try to do this and felt very guilty if I missed a day!

The very first time I was made to realise that there were more important things in life than housework and cleaning was when my eldest son was about six years old and I had a three month old baby.  We were living in a second floor flat in London with no garden and very small rooms.  It was the middle of February, towards the end of winter, and it was a fairly crisp Saturday, cold but the sun was shining. My husband was at work and the children and I had just finished lunch.  I was getting ready for my Saturday afternoon routine – wash up the lunch things, clean the kitchen, vacuum the house, get the dirty clothes ready to be taken to the Launderette when my husband came home.

Then my son asked me, “Mum, it’s sunny outside, can we go to the park?” (since we did not have a garden, he had to go to the park to kick a football around and the park was about 400 meters down the road).  Of course my first reply was, “not now darling, we’ll go when I finish my housework.”  Came back the reply, “But mum, by the time you finish the housework, the sun would have gone down and we won’t be able to go to the park.”

This stopped me in my tracks.  ‘He is right. What am I thinking? The housework will be there when we get back, but the Sun is not going to hang around for me to finish the chores!’  Suddenly, I made my decision, “Right, let’s go”.

We spent a couple of hours in the park that day. My son was happy running around, kicking his football and having a ride on the swings in the play area; the baby was happily sleeping in his bassinet in the sunshine and fresh air, and I was relaxing on a blanket thumbing through a magazine whilst keeping an eye on the boys. 

When we came home, I found that the housework I had to do was not a ‘chore’ any more.  The couple of hours of relaxation had done wonders for my mood. What’s more all the jobs I had planned to do that afternoon did get done!

That day made me realise that I should not forego the simple pleasures of life for something as mundane as housework.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating not doing cleaning or housework.  Of course it has to be done and in a somewhat timely fashion, but there will always be times when you have to get your priorities right and see if what the children want to do is more important than what you have in mind.

Another instance was when I had three boys aged 12, seven and five years.  They loved to play cricket in the backyard, but unless some of their friends came over, they had a wicket keeper, batsman and bowler but no fielder.  Then comes the request, “Mum can you come and field for us?”  One day I told them that I could not at that time because I had to do some work.  “What work?”, they asked.  “I have to clean the bathroom,” I said.  “What’s the point mum, it’ll only get dirty again,” was the response from my seven year old.

So, once again I postponed cleaning the bathroom to field, which I must admit was not the best of decisions I have ever made.  I broke a finger nail (much to my annoyance) and dropped a catch (much to their disgust), however I got to spend a couple of hours with the boys.

This day made me realise that the boys wanting my time was very limited because had one of their friends come over, they would not have asked me to join them.

This is another aspect that parents forget. When children are young they want us to spend time with them.  But as they grow up, they would rather spend their time with their friends than their parents. So we have to make most of the opportunities, when they are young, to spend as much time as possible with them.

Then came the time when my sons were aged 16, 11 and nine.  All three were playing cricket for the local club and at their school.  In the summer they played on Saturdays and Sundays and had training two days a week. Between the three of them, there was a mountain of cricket whites to be washed every week.  Getting them white – particularly the pants with the grass stains, mud stains and the red from the cricket balls – was a challenge.  I was spending a lot of time, rubbing the spots, pre-soaking, washing and ironing.  

One afternoon I was in the laundry rubbing the stains on one of the pants, prior to soaking, when my eldest son came in and asked me what I was doing.  I told him, with a bit of a complaint in my voice, that I was trying to get their cricket gear stain free.  His answer was, “Why mum? Who’s going to see the spots when we are in the middle of the field? In any case within minutes of being in the field they will have more stains. As long they are clean and don’t smell, don’t worry about the stains.”  From that day on there was no more rubbing or pre-soaking – just washing with plenty of fabric softener!

These are just a few of the instances when I took heed of what the boys had to say and changed my way of looking at things.  I can honestly say that they helped me to be stress-free for most of my life. There were many more instances where they have changed my way of thinking and doing things, and I am the first to admit that I would not have won any awards in the ‘Best Home & Garden’ category. 

However, one of the high-lights of my life was when a friend of my sons, who had not visited us for a few years because he was out of the country, came over one day and told me, “I am so glad to be back and especially glad to be able to visit you because I had almost forgotten how welcoming your home is.”

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