My daughter’s mother had to go back into the hospital after only one night of my daughter being home, so night two it was just me. I was EXHAUSTED, and at about 11pm when I couldn’t get my daughter laid down to sleep for a few hours, I called up my mom and she came and helped so I could sleep for a few hours, thank goodness lol.
Hope she was alright!
Sometimes you need the help and that's okay!
I still call my parents to help once in a while and my kids are school/preschool aged. lol
Some weeks its only me and the kids and its just so busy with one parent. I don't know how single parents manage, they have superpowers or something.
When my parents pick up the kids, my mom will have them bathed and already started with dinner by the time I get home. My mom also will clean the kitchen cause its not up to her standards (eye rolllllll, we are clean ppl though lol). It's also nice cause then I know I don't have to rush out of work to get home.
Side note:
First night my first child was born I stayed at the hospital (first 24 hours), second night mother in law came to the hospital to help and I went home so that I could go to work the next day . That second night was probably the best sleep I've ever had; fell asleep as soon as I hit the pillow slept through until my alarm. lol
Not what you are asking to chime in about but...
This is a good example of how easily young kids can pick up language when they are exposed to it.
If you speak another language, I encourage you to speak as much as you can! They will learn English in school, its fine lol.
My parents mostly spoke only English to us (if they spoke to us at all), so we didn't learn much or at all. Language schools were awful cause of the old school teachers. At a young age, the development of my ethnic language (the very little I learned to listen and understand) I learned was from relatives who spoke it to me, me hearing my relatives talk to my parents, or going to restaurants and hearing the servers speak. Later in young adult years, I worked in a workplace that had lots of patients that were of the same ethnic background. Boss took and gave me a chance, even though I couldn't really speak that well or at all, but by being immersed in the environment it helped me pick up some more words, gave me the chance to practice, and I just had to get over that wall of being embarrassed to try. Lucky for me, there wasn't a lot of technical or specific vocabulary I had to learn and explain. The conversations with patients was just everyday conversations and the things I had to teach them repeats with different patients, so I got to practice those words/phrases frequently lol. My gf/now wife's mother prefers is more comfortable in her own language, so I was also exposed to the language with my wife's family.
Now with kids, I encourage both set of grandparents to speak to my kids in our ethnic language.
My mom says okay, but then she will just say the most random words with no context such as "hello" "thank you" etc.
My dad doesn't engage with the kids much. He will just ask them questions and expect them to understand and answer back.
Mother in law just uses English cause she thinks our kids won't understand even though we told them they have to use the language so that they can learn it and then she just reverts to English. She then blames the other set of grandchildren (who are biracial) and says the same thing they don't understand so she uses English.
Father in law is better, but just forgets and uses English since he is comfortable with it too.
Language is a huge part of your identity. I feel like I failed somehow and I haven't even done anything wrong? Maybe its cause I feel like I don't have the brain to learn languages like how others can learn so quickly and it sticks. Maybe I just gotta step it up and try as much as I can with my kids (most of it will just be simple command like things like "go brush your teeth, put on shoes, dinner time," but I guess its better than nothing. Am I shifting the blame to may parents? Or is it my fault (but I was just a kid, I didn't know the language?)?
I'm trying to encourage language school, but wife is not encouraging it and older kid doesn't like to try new things. I could just send her to go lol, but growing up going to language school the experience was really not enjoyable (maybe cause I felt behind since I didn't have as much language background as other students). Maybe the next generation of language teachers are more engaging and more fun though.
I guess this is a reminder for me to instill more cultural/ethnic values in my kids and make sure they learn about our culture more. I think we've lost some of it and have become too western. We will only celebrate the new year now (like my parents and my family etc)
Thanks for reading my rant and sorry for going off on a tangent. lol
Lee And His Sneaks
congrats.
. Need to get lil homie on the football field but he rather watch anime and video games
