{"id":206,"date":"2013-07-17T17:15:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-17T17:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tamaragranthambooks.com\/2013\/07\/on-being-a-mother\/"},"modified":"2015-11-13T15:20:47","modified_gmt":"2015-11-13T15:20:47","slug":"on-being-a-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tamaragrantham.com\/StagingSite\/on-being-a-mother\/","title":{"rendered":"On Being a Mother"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I recently read a post (sorry, can&#8217;t remember where) about a mother of five children. She was bothered by comments others made about her lifestyle. Comments like, &#8220;Wow, you&#8217;ve got your hands full.&#8221; &#8220;How do you do it?&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Her response was that she chose to have five children, she wouldn&#8217;t choose anything else, and while she may have her hands full, she feels grateful to have her children.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m paraphrasing. And I completely agree with the author. But I have another bone to pick&#8211;something that&#8217;s bothered me for a long while. <\/p>\n<p>I am a stay at home mom of four children. It&#8217;s what I always wanted to do, but in truth, I never prepared for. In high school, I took all the AP classes, studied hard, shunned the home ec. classes because they were blow-off classes. I took Advanced classes, because those would be the classes I needed for college, for my future. In college, I challenged myself, didn&#8217;t take any classes having to do with homemaking or cooking, because again, I didn&#8217;t need those.<\/p>\n<p>I got my degree in English, even got a teaching certificate. I was prepared for the world, right?<\/p>\n<p>And then I had children.<\/p>\n<p>How many times have I wished I would&#8217;ve had classes on home maintenance, keeping a schedule, child psychology, stress reduction, how to communicate with a spouse?<\/p>\n<p>But I didn&#8217;t take those classes, because I wouldn&#8217;t need them.<\/p>\n<p>It makes me realize how messed up our system is. I don&#8217;t regret taking AP English and Pre-Cal, but I wish I would&#8217;ve had an opportunity to take classes that would actually help me in my situation now. <br \/>\nI&#8217;m not saying that going to college is a bad thing. I loved my college experience, and I plan on going back someday to get a Master&#8217;s degree, but why was I so focused on getting the grade in Calculus, when I would&#8217;ve been better off focusing on how to communicate with children.<\/p>\n<p>I always assumed the mothering thing would come naturally. Some of it did. But I&#8217;ll admit, sometimes I have no clue. <\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, I&#8217;ll learn while I go. I&#8217;ll take the challenges with a positive attitude. And someday I might figure out what I&#8217;m doing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently read a post (sorry, can&#8217;t remember where) about a mother of five children. She was bothered by comments others made about her lifestyle. Comments like, &#8220;Wow, you&#8217;ve got your hands full.&#8221; &#8220;How do you do it?&#8221; Her response was that she chose to have five children, she wouldn&#8217;t choose anything else, and while [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamaragrantham.com\/StagingSite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamaragrantham.com\/StagingSite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamaragrantham.com\/StagingSite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamaragrantham.com\/StagingSite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamaragrantham.com\/StagingSite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tamaragrantham.com\/StagingSite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1542,"href":"https:\/\/tamaragrantham.com\/StagingSite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions\/1542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamaragrantham.com\/StagingSite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamaragrantham.com\/StagingSite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamaragrantham.com\/StagingSite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}