I used to ask my child “Do you need help?” when she was struggling to put her shoes on or buckle her car seat or get down off the high kitchen stool. To which she'd yell “NO! I CAN DO IT!” And then I’d bribe, beg or count to ten, and this was a fun little fight we had every hour of every single day. My child was trying to be independent before she was capable. But that wasn't the problem. Actually, it was a healthy step in her mental and physical development. Try, try, try, try and get better until you can. The problem was that I was not treating her the way I like to be treated. When people ask me “do you need help?” my brain also automatically yells “NO! I CAN DO IT!” Because when people ask do you need help? it feels like they’re asking are you incompetent? Western culture is OBSESSED with personal autonomy. We are the society of self-made people. Self-made people DO NOT NEED HELP. The daily argument between the persistent toddler and the punctual mother ended the day I asked her a different question. I saw her struggling and said “Does this need teamwork?” Suddenly, we’re not calling into question whether or not she is capable, but whether the task she’s working on merits support. I’m asking if we can do this together. Kids LOVE togetherness. There were still things she insisted on doing by herself, but it moved the bar significantly in how often she allowed me to come alongside her. Her sensitivity to being judged was causing her to be defensive and shut out the support being offered by her community. (See where I’m going with this?) The Truth about Unsolicited Advice Like you, I’ve been offered a lot of unsolicited advice. When I was pregnant with my first child, I was followed through the toothpaste aisle by a lady who insisted that I bring my own mineral oil to the delivery ward. I’ve been invited to tea only to find myself in a sit-down lecture about the merits of homeschooling. I’ve been accosted in the cheese aisle for turning my back on my baby for the twenty seconds it took to grab a block of extra sharp cheddar and a bag of pre-shredded part-skim mozzarella. “Because that’s when they steal your kid” (Hello, FBI?... There's a lady at Walmart who... okay, someone already called... okay, glad it's not just me). When these things happen to us, we tend to respond defensively, because we hear them saying “I think you’re doing this wrong.” My response was always exasperation and annoyance. But then I tried empathy, and that led to a realization. All these crazy, unhelpful people were trying to support me. They were following their instinct to community me. And I was too busy being defensive to see that instead of "you're doing this wrong," most of the time they were just following their impulse to support me. Sometimes the way they go about it doesn't make sense and isn’t at all helpful. Which isn't necessarily their fault. We've spent a few decades tearing down the establishment, and now there are no rules anymore. We’re lacking the common etiquette for what to do when you see a pregnant lady at the grocery store. In the last chapter, we talked about overcoming our fear of being judged. In this chapter, we’re talking about how to undo the defenses that keep your community from reaching you. AND, we're going to talk about how to leverage that community-impulse that people still have into the support structure that it's meant to be. Remember. Raising children is hard. We do not start out competent at it. We are apprentices, and apprentices need mentors. The Breastfeeding Study and the Need for Mommy Mentorship NPR published a great story about a nomadic tribe in Namibia that had zero reported breastfeeding issues. Researchers interviewed the women of that tribe to find out why they were so good at breastfeeding, in hopes that their findings would help the 92% of women in western cultures who experience breastfeeding issues. There were theories about the discrepancy that have caused a rise in breastfeeding problems in western culture: we’ve moved away from our maternal instincts, we sleep separately, we discourage women from nursing in public, we have left traditional medicine in favor of male-centric western medicine. It is easy to romanticize other cultures, or other eras of human history, and tell ourselves “they didn’t have this problem." But that’s completely false. Not only did the village women of Namibia experience all the same breastfeeding issues that American women experience, they also had all the same insecurities regarding infant care in general – like how to hold a baby. The difference was that these women spent their last trimester and first few months postpartum in the care of an experienced mother. (It’s a great read, if you have time.**) Namibian women have all the same issues in the beginning of motherhood, BUT they experience them in the presence of mentors who give them guidance and support. Western women, on the other hand, are often left to figure it out alone, and the fear of being judged can lead us to hide our issues instead of seeking help. But if doing it alone is already too much, how can we expect moms to also construct for ourselves a support system? How do we build a new boat when we’re spending every drop of energy bailing water out of the one we’re sinking in? Finding your team. Now we’re ready to accept help, great. I want you to also understand that your defenses aren't the only obstacle. There are fewer helpers. As we read in the second chapter, people are moving more often and further away from where they were born. Moving toward opportunities is a positive thing, but the trade-off is that you lose your natural support communities. It’s nice that your friend has a parent who retired to be her free part-time nanny. Good for her. That’s not a reality for most of us, and it’s not a fair expectation to place on other people. If it isn't offered, it's not realistic to ask for it. When I most needed help, the people who might have been there for me were either working in their own careers, lived far away, or they were caring for their aging parents. In some cases, they were enjoying their retirement in far-off places, or another person in our community was just a squeakier wheel than me. Asking for help took a lot out of me. It was a major blow to my pride. But I did it! And then, often, I was told “no.” Or worse, “yes,” and then that person flaked. One of many examples: I hired a babysitter to watch my son every other Friday for three hours so I could fulfill my volunteering requirement at my daughter’s preschool, and half of the time she would text me at the last minute that she wasn't coming. Eventually, she quit altogether. Experiences like that really entrenched me into the mindset that I didn’t have help and couldn’t depend on other people. And my response to that feeling was to build a life that required no help. Let me tell you. When you build yourself a life that depends on no one, you end up turning away help even when it’s offered. Because as much as you can’t do it alone, it’s even harder to do it alone while having the rug pulled out from under you.* There are people who want to help, and then there are people who are actually helpful. I want you to have a team that you can depend on. Let’s look at the lineup. The Spouse. First, let’s talk about your closest team-mate – your spouse. If you do not have a spouse, skip this section. I once came home to find that my husband had given my daughter a block of wood and a hammer, and my son was strapped into the running stroller while my husband sautered away on his workshop bench. Is this how I usually cared for the children? No. Were they hungry and tired because their meal and nap schedule was ignored? Yes. Would I have preferred that he spend daddy time playing WITH the children? Yes. But everyone was alive, so I said nothing. We are so quick to correct how our spouses care for the children, usually in an impatient way that implies that they are doing it wrong. If your partner is keeping the child alive, then they are not doing it wrong. Were we not allowed the grace to do this wrong at first? We figured it out, and so will they. Our kids survived our rookie caregiver mistakes just fine, they will survive our partner's rookie caregiver mistakes too. In the last chapter, we talked about having empathy toward other parents instead of casting judgement. That goes for our spouse, too! Do not expect your spouse to care for the children the same way you do. Every mom does things her own way, and we respect that. You can respect that your spouse will do things their own way as well. And you can expect that they will make mistakes. Let them know that you believe in them. Triage your spouse first, not the children. When they lose their temper because they’ve had enough, take the opportunity to empathize with them. Don’t be like “Ha! How does it FEEL?” Because deep down, you know you’ve totally lost your temper when no one was looking. And when you did, you wanted someone to say “It’s okay. You’re doing fine.” For most moms, it's impossible to take a break from caregiving unless we are NOT PHYSICALLY PRESENT. Being the primary caregiver means that our kids will still ask US for a snack, even if our husband is in the kitchen and we are in the shower (ask me how I know this). My husband got tired of fighting to keep our kids from pounding on the bedroom door when I was trying to rest. He told me "I think you need to leave. It's easier to keep the kids from bothering you if you're not here." (insert sound of minivan tires squealing) Drive to a park. Heck, sit in your car in the garage. Be. Not. Home. Let go. They might watch TV the whole time and eat candy. Doesn’t matter. It’s okay. Your spouse is not a moron. They can feed the children. And keep them alive. And even bathe them and put them to bed. They might not be wearing pajamas. They might not go to bed on time. It’s fine. Let your spouse learn, without you hovering nearby issuing demerits. By treating your spouse as a teammate instead of a bumbling sidekick, you invite support and empower them to fully experience parenting. And, you'll have a good mindset for bringing your kids onboard as teammates when they're old enough to do chores! The Sisterhood Brain Trust I once texted a friend at 9pm from the grocery store. “HELP! I’m stuck in the toothpaste aisle!” I was shopping after the kids went to bed because I was too burned out to do it with them. The first thing on my list was toddler toothpaste and I couldn't decide between fluoride and fluoride-free. The internet had told me that fluoride crosses the blood-brain barrier and can let in heavy metals and what if that’s where autism comes from, but my dentist had told me to use fluoride toothpaste because you only need to use a tiny grain-of-rice amount and that’s not enough to hurt her, but they make kids toothpaste in candy flavors and I once caught her sneaking into the bathroom to eat it out of the tube. I was, absolutely, stuck. I could. not. move. Choosing my college major took less mental energy than this. My friend replied with a laughing face emoji. I get it. It’s not that this is a big deal, you’re just burned out and can’t make one more decision right now. It doesn’t matter, pick one. I closed my eyes, grabbed a random box of toothpaste, and threw it into my basket. Being in a wealthy capitalist society means we have to make SO MANY DECISIONS. Nothing is simple. We have to decide how we will feed our baby, which diapers to use, and which wipes, and which butt cream. Add to that the era of commercial virtue-signaling, meaning that each of those choices claims to matter so, so much. Are we going to buy the baby soap that boasts “No phalabthermatides”? Or do we buy the one that is cheap. Or the one that donates a portion of it’s profits to rescuing baby penguins. Or the one that is local, or woman-owned, or black-owned. Each of these is sold to us as a tool for putting on our identity, and it’s false. We just need baby shampoo. Our parent's generation had three options to choose from, and our grandparent's generation had ONE. Before that, baby shampoo was regular shampoo that you used on your baby. I LOOKED IT UP. It’s. So. Much. And since we’re told that we're the “expert on our baby,” we have to decide it all, every time, using all of our college-taught research and critical thinking skills, alone. And if anyone offers suggestions, not only are they implying that we aren’t able to make that decision, but they are challenging our status as the Only One Qualified to Make This Decision. Enough. ENOUGH. You are burning out. This requires teamwork. Think of two or three friends who have at least one kid 3-5 years older than yours and who have good critical thinking skills. You trust their judgment, and because they are just a few years ahead of you, they made their decisions in basically the same context and it was recently enough that they remember what they did. They are your brain trust. When you feel stuck, skip the google vortex, skip Pinterest and anonymous mommy blogs, and text the people in your brain trust. The Sitter There are very few people who I trust to take care of my children. Just because someone LOVES your kiddos, doesn’t mean they have the skills to care for them solo. It’s not personal, but don’t feel like you have to take them up on their offer if you’re pretty sure they will be on their phone the whole time or don’t know how to change a diaper or are likely to fall asleep on the couch. I have a young friend who I call my “car sitter.” When I had a long list of errands, I would pick her up (she was eleven) and she would hang out in the car with my kiddos while I ran into the store for a loaf of bread, into Target to return a pair of shoes, into the veterinary office to pick up the dog’s heartworm pills, and into Ross to try on three dresses for the wedding we’re going to next week. The kids were strapped in, sometimes sleeping. OR, I would bring her with me to an appointment so she could entertain the kids in the waiting room while I had my chin hairs lasered (Best birthday gift EVER.) Car sitters grow up to be excellent date night sitters, house sitters, and part-time nannies. Think about who might make a good sitter-in-training for you. Ask your Brain Trust who they depend on for babysitting, and start a conversation with that person. It might be an older woman who used to have a day care, it might be a college student or a young single person, or a homeschooled highschooler. A good sitter is a key player in your support lineup. If something happened to you today, and you don’t know who you would call, that's a good sign that it's time to start looking for one. Invite them to come with you to the park, or help you around the house. Sitters aren't just for when you need to leave the house. It's amazing how helpful it is to have someone put the baby in the stroller and walk them around the neighborhood for an hour, or sit on the couch and read to them while you do your chores, schedule appointments, answer emails, or SHOWER. And having them around when you're there makes for an easy transition to them watching the kids when you leave.* Am I abandoning my kids? No. You are not abandoning your kids. It is not a normal thing for you to be the only-ever caregiver for your kids. It’s good for you to be able to turn off and not be in charge. It’s good for your kids to experience being cared for by someone else. And, it’s good to know who is in your corner if you find yourself in a situation where doing it by yourself isn’t an option. Plan to need help Last year, I came down with covid for the third time. I’m a long-hauler, which sucks for creatives because it knocks out our creative mojo and all we can do is wait for the lights to slowly come back on. Unbeknownst to my doctor and I, an E. Coli infection was using covid as a fall guy to avoid suspicion. I literally had dysentery. It went untreated for six weeks, leaving me physically and mentally fragile. By the time we caught it I was thin and weak, living on miso soup, desperate for sleep to stave off the nausea and panic attacks. One day, my friend Gretchen knocked on my door because it was my birthday and she noticed that I hadn’t been around. She asked if I was okay, and I was forced to go against my pride and admit that I was absolutely NOT OKAY. I had deadlines coming up that I was going to miss, my house was a mess, and my kids had cabin fever because I was barely able to leave the bathroom, let alone take them to the park. She brought me food, told the ladies at our church that I was sick, and recruited a mutual friend to come and help me clean the house. She would have set up a meal train if I hadn’t insisted against it.*** Needing help isn’t an “if,” it’s a “when.” And being helped is not a moral failing, it’s a divine gift. Community Exists The good news is, you don’t have to start a community. You can join one. (In fact, if someone suggests that you start one, I recommend that you say “No.”) Furthermore, community doesn’t mean you have to be besties with every person. That’s frankly a lot of emotional work. In Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World, Jennie Allen says that every person has the emotional capacity for 2-5 really good friends. In addition to friends, she claims that every person needs 10-15 people who live within five miles and have the capacity to function as a family in times of crisis. Ask around and find out where your Brain Trust have found community. It might be a softball league, or a bible study, or a business networking group, or their kids are in 4H. It doesn’t have to be a large group, and they don’t all have to be BFFs. Spending time with a group of people, even if it's just a couple times a month, is enough to build that network of support. Surprisingly, I found community at the bus stop. For ten minutes in the morning, about a dozen of us parents stand at the park with our kids waiting for the school bus. In the afternoon, we stand there as our kids run off their energy on the playground. Our kids become friends, and the parents exchange numbers under the pretense of "having a play date sometime" (which never happens). Eventually, someone misses the memo that it's a minimum day, and we text each other "are you on your way?" "Yes, sorry, can you hang onto my kid until I get there?" No problem :) It's not an episode of Friends, and it's not supposed to be. It's an awkward family reunion every day where you respect each other's personal lives, but you care about each other's needs and feel a sense of responsibility to make sure everyone is okay. For a long time, trying to find community felt like fighting to be invited to a party, and then struggling to feel welcome. The bus stop taught me to stop trying so hard to "earn" my place. To stop pretending to conform to an unwritten standard in an attempt to fit in, out of a deep-seated fear that I would be rejected and alone. In the next chapter, we will talk about loneliness. The stigma, the pain, the rampant problem of isolation. For now, I'll just say this. Community is not a game of musical chairs, constantly competing for limited spots. That mindset leads us to feel jealous, rejected and betrayed 99 times for every 1 time we are included. It's not healthy, please stop doing that to yourself, I'm shutting up now before I insert all of Chapter 5 into this paragraph right here. Instead, think of community like sitting on a trampoline with a dozen other people. Even when everyone's doing their own thing, they are aware of each other. Synchronized. We expect that when someone is in desperate need, they should go find help. That’s backwards. When you open yourself up to a lifestyle of being helped, then you won’t have to go looking for helpers when you need them. The other people on the trampoline will sense it. They will come looking for YOU. ……………………………. To Do: Who in your immediate family can you trust to keep your kids safe? Are you willing to let them care for your kids in their own way? If you’ve alienated your spouse (or other family members) in the past, apologize for having unfair expectations and let them know that you will try not to micromanage your children’s experiences when they are in someone else’s care. Think of up to three people (preferably who live within 5 miles of you) that you can establish a sitter relationship with. List two or three moms in your life who are raising kids a few years older than yours, have a similar parenting style as you, and have good judgment. Decide that you will text them when you're stuck. Take note of where your friends, family and acquaintances are finding connection with others. List interests you have that would link you to others in a small group setting. Or think about what activities in your life put you into contact with a small group of people on a regular basis. What’s something you’d like to do kid-free this month? Enlist the help of your spouse, a family member or a sitter so that you can practice being helped. …………………………………. *if you’re new to accepting help, or you’re not sure if someone is dependable, start with something low-stakes in case they are late, or flake, or you aren't comfortable with leaving them alone quite yet. Don’t break in a new sitter for that dental appointment that would take three weeks to reschedule. Ask them to help so you can do something by yourself, or together. For example, ask them to come over so you can go to the park and read a book, or maybe your shoes are worn out and you’d like to shop for a new pair without chasing tiny people, or you want to meet your spouse for lunch. If they bail, then you can stay home, or take the kids with you. If you aren't comfortable leaving the kids with them just yet, invite them to come along to the park or the shoe store and chase the kids while you read or shop. **https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/06/26/534021439/secrets-of-breast-feeding-from-global-moms-in-the-know *** note on being part of a community: we all know people who are constantly leveraging all the assets available to them for their own gain. The world of business and success coaching heavily encourages it’s followers to replace the symbiotic community mindset with a self-centric mindset that sees community as an opportunity to mine people for resources. We all know that guy. Leaning on your community in times of desperate need doesn’t make you that guy. But also, when you’re NOT in desperate need… don’t be that guy.