How A Young Mother Can Learn To Accept Help From Loved Ones

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Many young mothers, especially those who happened to combine motherhood with study or work, admit that one of the most vivid and difficult feelings associated with the status of a mother, paradoxically, is the feeling of loneliness. “I realized that the problems with the child are just my problems,” they say. Indeed, very often the hopes for help from relatives are not justified. It happens that the people closest to you unexpectedly refuse to understand your urgent needs and to meet halfway, especially when it comes to helping with your child.

It is especially offensive for those mothers who, since the time of pregnancy, have counted on help from grandmothers, grandfathers or the child's father, and a few months after his birth, they were alone with their problems. Life situations are different. If your loved ones live in another city or for health reasons are deprived of the opportunity to take part in your life, it is absolutely pointless to grumble about fate. Instead, you have to learn to do on your own.

But it happens that potential assistants are very close, sometimes even under the same roof with a tired young mother, and do not see her despair at close range, do not hear her calls.

Before blaming your loved ones for hard-heartedness, try to understand yourself. Do you know how to accept help from your relatives? Appreciate what you have First of all, try to remember what kind of help you get, and how often you get it. Best of all, take a piece of paper in your hands and make a list of things that loved ones have done for you and your baby. It is possible that this list will turn out to be much longer than you might have imagined.

Why then did you think that no one wanted to help you? There may be two reasons for this.

The first reason is that you are used to taking a lot of what is being done for you for granted. Let's say your mom has been preparing dinner for the whole family for as long as you can remember. You cannot even imagine what happens otherwise. What kind of help is this, you ask, it is her responsibility. As long as you take everything that other people do for granted, they take your input the same way. It seems to them that everything that an unbearable burden has laid on your shoulders is just your daily duty, and they see no reason to take on a part of it. In addition, it is quite possible that in the depths of their hearts they accuse you of the same thing that you do them - of misunderstanding and unwillingness to help. Learn to appreciate the help you get. Be sure to thank everyone who helped you in your daily concerns, no matter how small their contribution. In a conversation with loved ones, emphasize how important and pleasant everything they do for you is for you. Refuse negative abstract statements like "Nobody helps me!" or “No one is interested in my problems,” because most likely they are not. It is always more pleasant for a grateful person to provide help and support.

The second reason is somewhat more complicated. Perhaps you and your assistants have different ideas about what kind of help you need. For example, your mother-in-law washes the children's clothes herself, and you are not at all a burden to wash, but you really want at least someone to wash the dishes after breakfast for you. As a result, the mother-in-law believes that she is contributing to family life, and you are offended that she does not take on your most unloved business. Therefore, after you have compiled a list of existing help, decide what kind of help you need. This point just seems the easiest. In fact, it is not at all so unambiguous. Many women think that they need help in at least something, but as soon as it comes to specific responsibilities, it turns out that they cannot and do not want to entrust the child to a stranger, they want to cook dinner themselves, washing the dishes as such does not tire them, and the floor, washed by another person, does not seem clean enough to them. They groan under the burden of responsibilities, but as soon as they try to help them, it turns out that helping them is only a burden.

So, try to make a list of things in which you would like to receive help from family. The list should be realistic (it is clear that no one except you can breastfeed your child), but as complete as possible. Understanding what you want is fundamentally important. Only then can you move on to the next item.

Learn to ask for help. Alas, most modern women don't know how to ask. As a child, many of us were taught to be proud and self-reliant. Wait until others “will offer themselves and will give everything themselves” (c). Unfortunately, very often you have to wait all your life. You can’t wait. The ability to articulate your own desires is one of the key skills in the field of relationships.

Your husband may not be aware of your needs. From the outside it may seem that you are doing just fine with everything, even if in fact you are collapsing from fatigue. However, many prefer to hint at their needs or conduct conversations in a "roundabout way". For example: "I would really like to be able to be alone for several hours a day in order to work in a relaxed atmosphere." Having uttered such a phrase, do you expect your spouse or mother to offer you a walk with your child? Alas, this does not always work. You may simply be sincerely sympathetic or suggest that you wait until the children grow up.

Refuse hidden manipulation. Talk to loved ones about your desires as concretely as possible. "Please, take a walk today with the child yourself, it is very important for me to finish the work." Such a request may seem too direct to you, but this is exactly what you should ask - the interlocutor will not be able to pretend that he did not understand what you want. After the request has been fulfilled, be sure to sincerely thank the helper. If a person helped you on his own initiative, be sure to tell him that you were pleased, and that it was this kind of help that you needed. Believe me, if you can convey to your loved ones what exactly they can do for you so that you are satisfied, they will do it much more often and more willingly.

Sometimes the inability to ask turns out to be its dark side. The woman is embarrassed to ask for help (perhaps she considers it humiliating), but she needs help and begins to demand. She is pre-configured to refuse, she does not ask, but reproaches. Instead of asking her husband to take out the trash, she begins to reprimand him for never taking out the trash. She liberally spices her speech with criticism of her husband. Or immediately begins to prove their rights to this or that support. Instead of asking the mother to stay with the child, she begins her speech by postulating her right: "Can I go somewhere at least once in my life?" As a result, voluntary assistance to a loved one in the eyes of your relatives turns into the satisfaction of your requirements. Nobody likes to be forced to do something. Perhaps you will ensure that your husband takes out the trash, and the mother stays with the child, but they will never offer you voluntary support. Each time you will have to expend more and more mental strength, use more and more harsh expressions, and relatives will avoid your requests, just as teenagers avoid the requirements of strict parents. Another extreme is overly “humiliated” requests. There is no need to kneel down and beg your spouse to make his own supper. If you too plaintively and verbosely beg your relatives to come into your position, they subconsciously feel that you yourself do not consider your right to receive support as legitimate. Remember that this is not so - you have every reason to count on the support of loved ones, if you have good enough relations with them and they can physically provide you with this support.

Learn to give thanks. Sincere gratitude is the payment that you not only can, but are obliged to give in exchange for the help of others. Even if this help is rare and not quite as much as you would like. Try to refrain from criticism, as well as from comments like "well, finally, I thought of it." Such statements completely discourage any desire to help you. Thank your family members, praise them for their participation in your life, emphasize how important their contribution is to you. But at the same time, remember that if a loved one, of his own free will and out of love for you, helps you in your worries, this does not make you a debtor or a hostage. Do not let the service rendered manipulate you.

There is this type of relationship: the manipulative ring. Family help often becomes a tool for creating this completely ineffective type of communication between relatives. It sounds something like this: “How much effort I have spent on babysitting your child, and you have not a drop of gratitude. Please, please move the phone to my room, but you feel sorry for it. " You move the phone to the specified location. And after a couple of days you announce: “We went to meet you, gave you a phone, but you don't appreciate it at all. Not to sit with your child on the weekend! " Breaking such a ring is not always easy. Many people tend to manipulate their loved ones. As long as we are talking about simple "services for a service" - you can put up with it. It is much worse if relatives begin to invade your life, impose their own rules of the game, arguing that you cannot cope without them. Sometimes, under the guise of helping, they do things that are unacceptable to you. For example, while staying with the child, the grandmother forcibly feeds him with food that he does not need to eat, or sets him up against one of the parents. No polite requests work for her. In this case, you'd better refuse her help. Refusal to help loved ones should be a thoughtful and balanced decision, and not an offensive word thrown in the heat of the moment. And there is certainly no point in blackmailing loved ones by refusing to help. This is not only ineffective, but also detrimental to your relationship. If you seriously want to refuse the help of relatives, you should not start by breaking the relationship. Cope on your own is quite doable, even if you have small children, work and a lot of chores around the house. At the same time, it is important not to forget that it was your choice, that in exchange for the load, you acquire independence, and that it seems to be worth it. Do not reproach others with the fact that you have to cope on your own if you have made such a choice consciously. Complaining about your "hard lot" and taking offense at your loved ones, you are just in vain poisoning yourself and as a result you really start to feel unhappy.

Give your loved ones the right to love you. If you still intend to resort to the help of relatives, do not try to regulate their contribution to your life "inside and out." Remember that the only true help is that which is offered out of love for you and your child. If a person is guided by love for loved ones, he helps voluntarily and with joy, provided that you know how to ask and accept help. You shouldn't feel guilty for doing it on your own and resorting to help. Most often, the main reason for the inability to accept help is precisely the feeling of guilt. And the last, but most important rule - whenever possible, help those who live near you. Help disinterestedly, not in return for the support provided to you, but on your own initiative. Your loved ones will certainly appreciate your help and will answer you in kind.