Maybe it's the "goldene medineh". Thank G-d I live in EY. Here there are lots of kids who don't go to camp and my kids always had someone to play with. And from junior high and up (middle school) the boys had learning programs for FREE from the school, from the shul, and the girls had learning and chessed stuff for FREE. That kind of stuff still exists. My shul has a program for boys and girls, separately, a "pre bein hazemanim" learning program three mornings a week from fourth grade and up. The Rov himself (!!) teaches the older boys (seventh to ninth grades) and brings other rabbonim from the area to talk to them and the rebbetzin teaches the girls. FREE. Yeah the shul costs 1000 shekel a year in dues but for that you get this summer program, moadon lectures for the elderly once a week with tiyulim, kollel yom shishi, two daf yomis (6 AM and 8 AM), and two shiurim every morning for those retired, given by members of the kehilla, my dh gives one a week and also kollel yom shishi once a month. And the kids have shul activities all summer too.
All this came from "popular demand" and the fact that there were and still are some incredible people in this and other kehilas who took on themselves to organize such things for their kids, today their grandkids.
Meaning there CAN be kehilos where this can be done. For free. And schools too. But some of you seem to be so on the "my kids MUST go away" bandwagon....again, why? Because you are BTs and that's the real yiddishkeit your kids get? That's one issue. But for those where it is not the case, again, why should I have to pay for your kids camp when my own kids don't go?
FS I agree with a lot. But I am bothered by the idea of BC for money reasons. It seems... Such a waste. Every child is forever and brings its own bracha to the world. If it means tsedaka... S*cks, but I understand.
For info, I pay full tuition, attended the school gala last yr (almost the only parents), and financed a needy child at daycamp last summer (we booked two camps, parents told me to not get money back).
"go to your rebbe and get a heter so that it won't become eight kids under the age of ten and then you will fall apart leaving eight yesomin chas vesholom....'
This won't happen if camps are made more afforable. Sure, no kids = no need for camp, but zero growth rate in Klal Yisrael is not a good solution.
B"H my 8 year old is a normal boy. A normal 8 year old boy in 2011 can't spend many vacation days listening to a Tanach "tape" (you mean CD ;-)) and then writing up a summary. I have a son who probably can pretty happily, but then again, he is not typical.
I have some kollel friends who don't send their kids to kaitana, or not all their kids - and every year I feel bad for them. They have it tough. I keep urging one to apply for the subsidy, but she says they make her feel terrible about it.
My 12 year old wants to go to a 10 day sleepaway camp. We said no - it's gotten too expensive. She doesn't need it for her chinuch.
Last edited by Isramom8 on Thu, Jun 30 2011, 2:39 am; edited 1 time in total
I think what's different now is that people are more exposed to views in other circles. Fifteen years ago the Internet was slow enough that I wouldn't bother to spend time finding out what New Yorkers thought about summer camp, today even small-town girls like me can learn via forums like this one that there's a whole other world out there, with very different norms.
Tamiri, without imamother and the like, would you have known that there are people who think camp is a necessity even for the children of SAHMs, or that there are circles where 20-year-old newlyweds-to-be are expected to exchange diamond jewelry and $3,000 watches and the like? I sure wouldn't have.
But I bet those people existed 20 years ago too, just without the forum in which to share their customs with the rest of the world.
ora, ya know... I lived in a LOT of places with a lot of different types. The only places I "missed" were Lakewood and, to an extent, Brooklyn. Even though both I am my parents are NYC born... Whatever I would not have gotten here, I would have read in Rebbetzin Jungreis' column, which is where I first found out about Jewish entitlement anyway. Way before Imamother.
When my FATHER, was just a lad growing up in Brooklyn, and his family was down on their luck and couldn't fund the "must have" camp (my grandmother wanted fresh air for her boys), you know what they did? My uncles worked as waiters and my grandmother worked as a "dietician" which is a nice way to say cook, at camp. As an only child, my mother got camp from her parents, both of whom worked. Oh, did I mention this was in the 1930s and 40s?
My parents moved us to Monsey when I was 1 yo and trust me: there were plenty of summers I was not sent to camp.
So maybe part of family planning is also where you choose to live? Maybe you need to take into account that camp and the bungalow colony are part and parcel with living in the city.
I have friends who do the same thing today - they work as a babysitter and a mashgiach in Davos and get top spend the summer there as a family
I have small kids. I take buses with small kids. I don't look forward to it, but it's hardly at the soul-sucking, insanity-creating level of difficulty either.
Anything sounds hard if you break it down like that. If I were to describe sending an email step by step it would sound like a lot of work. But in reality, you walk down the street, fold your stroller, keep an eye on the kids for a few minutes while waiting for the bus - not anything harder than what most people do each day (on that note - a "regular" day for many people doesn't involve time to themselves while the kids are in school).
I think the people describing how difficult it is looking after 6 children (mama bear, ronit) do not actually HAVE 6 children. Or even 4 or 5. (ok, they may have other circumstances that make life very diffiicult, but for those of us without those circumstances, things may be very different)
I have taken my (5) kids on buses many times and it is not such a big deal at all. In some ways I prefer it to driving. I avoid buses where you need to fold the stroller and try and stick to the wheelchair accessible buses.
I may only have 2 kids, but I ran a playgroup with up to 11 kids, aged 1 year to 3 years old, for 2 years... So I know what its like to have a whole bunch of kids. I watched the kids from 7:30 am until 2 pm. And if you could believe it, I only started having an assistant for 2 hours a day, 2 times a week when I got 11 kids midway through the year- when I had 10, I was on my own. And we went to the park. And did projects. I think those who make having 6 kids (some who are significantly older than 3! because yes, as shalhevet said, unless you're octomom or have multiples, if you have 6 kids, your oldest is at LEAST 5 years old, probably older.) into such a big deal are over dramatizing for "special effects", but anyone could do that.
Ok, so because you want to do it that way, I'll describe MY living circumstances.
I have my family of 4 living in a 454 square foot apartment. In case that isn't clear what it means, I have one tiny room that potentially could be used to have kids sleep there, but its 9 feet by 6 feet, and could only really hold one bed, and thats it, so instead we use it for storage, as we have no closets.
We have one kitchen/living room/dining room, but I should really leave out the word living room, as there's no room in it for a couch, only a 6 seater table (pushed against the wall), 4 chairs, a toy box, 3 book cases, and our fridge and oven.
Then we have a bedroom. It holds 2 beds, 2 night stands, 1 dryer (no room for it anywhere else), 4 shelves, and that's it. Again, no closets. No floor space. No place for a crib really. We co sleep partially from choice, and partially because if we put them in the other room we would have zero space to store anything, as a bed and the storage units cant be in the room simultaneously, and there isn't really room to have them sleep in our non existent living room, as there's no room there even for a couch, but if we really needed to, we'd put a mattress on the floor and tiptoe around it.
And did I mention we have no yard? No porch other than our front porch/vestibule/entrance to our home, thats about 8 feet by 8 feet and shared with a neighbor, and can't really be played on, can't put a pool there, as it would block the entrance to my neighbor's home?
And no air conditioning.
Did I mention it can get really hot?
And that I have no car?
So, let me describe my standard day. How about today?
The kids went to sleep last night rather late, even though I made sure not to allow them to nap in the afternoon. I wasn't feeling well, so I went to bed even later.
My husband wakes me up at 6 am this morning because he needed to tell me something important before he left for work. After talking for 20 minutes, I get back into bed, hoping for some more shut eye, but sleep is evading me, because I'm stressed out about what my husband told me. At 7 am, just as I am finally drifting off, I get rudely awakened by my downstairs neighbor playing the drums. Of course, that means Shmaya wakes up, and the first second he is awake, he turns to me and says with his eyes still sleepy "Hungry! Eat!" I debate what I can give him to eat without needing to actually get out of bed and stay out of bed. Cereal and milk isn't an option, because that means I'd find cereal in his hair, on the floor, shmeared all over his clothes... and that would mean giving a bath at 7 am. I want to stay in bed, but there's no possible way I would leave him unsupervised to eat breakfast, breakfast in bed it is.
So I crawl out of bed, get a banana, give it to him, and lay my head back down, all the while hearing
his chomping in my ear. Not 5 seconds later, he turns to me "More banana". So I get up and get him another one, but while I'm in the kitchen, he jumps on his brother and wakes him up, and now I have another customer for bananas.
Now that both kids are up, I have no choice but to get out of bed.
I get up and survey the wreck that my house is in. Last night, I was so wiped out from my kids shenanigans that I had no more energy to clean up, and I get faced with the mess today. I am having a guest for shabbos, and I have a wedding to go to friday morning, so that means all the shabbos prep has to be done today. I get to work washing the dishes so I can go make breakfast, and while I'm washing the dishes, I have to go over and get Shmaya off the dining room table. Then break up a fight between the boys over who gets to sit in which chair. Then rush over because they're about to throw the laptop computer onto the floor. In the meantime, I managed to get about 6 dishes washed, enough for me to have with what to make breakfast.
I give them breakfast and hand some to each kid, but then shmaya starts having a melt down because HE wanted to give Uriel his breakfast, and I gave it to him.
Then of course, the diaper change. I have to chase shmaya all over the house, with him laughing maniacally as he dodges my arms and gets away, yet again. I finally pin him down and realize that the diaper is far away, so I call in the troops (Uriel) to bring me a diaper and wipes so I can change Shmaya where he is instead of him running away again. When I have everything and am about to start, I get a phone call from someone that really frustrated me, leaving me in a snappy mood. I finally put down the phone, change the diaper, and put on a video for the kids, so I can get a moment's peace and check my email. Of course, in those 15 minutes, shmaya turned off the computer 3 times, so I kept on needing to run into the other room. Finally Shmaya left the computer alone, so I was able to breathe a little more, or so I thought. In the meantime, shmaya stripped the sheets off both beds, threw the pillows and the blankets on the floor, and decided to empty the laundry basket filled with laundry I hadn't sorted onto the lot.
Of course, thats a lot better than his usual game- emptying the bottom 4 shelves of my clothing shelves onto the floor so he and Uriel can climb onto the shelves while all the shoes are on the floor, mixed with all my underwear, socks, bras, undershirts, skirts, shirts... that just a few minutes before were sorted and folded on the shelves, but now need to be refolded and put back in....
And mildly better than his other favorite game- taking every single toy out of the toybox and throwing it across the room so it lands under the fridge or table or on the kitchen counter...
And of course, all this trouble usually happens under the coaxing of his older brother, who thinks that if he only TELLS shmaya to misbehave, but isn't making trouble himself, he can get off scott free.
But I digress.
I realized that the kids were acting like this because they were a little cooped up, so I tempted them with a trip to the park, hoping that it would get their moods up and allow me a bit of a breather without needing to worry about the destruction they're making...
I ask Shmaya to find his sandals, but he couldn't, so that meant searching all over for his shoes, only to find them right in front of his face. Then Shmaya found Uriel's sandals and brought them to him. I told Uriel to put on his sandals, but he started kvetching that he was incapable of doing it. (He puts on his sandals all the time on his own.) He starts walking around the house having a meltdown, saying "I can't put on my shoes. I don't know how. See? I'm a baby, I'm falling" and then dramatically swooning to the floor, screaming "Help me", and when I ignore him, he gets up, swoons again, screams again, all the while crying "I don't know how to put on my sandals!"
Eventually after 10 minutes of this shenanigans, I had enough. I put on his sandals, got together some food to take with us to the park, and then needed to change Shmaya's diaper again. Of course, we had another running away and maniacally laughing episode, as usual... And then I had to get changed because the kids got me filthy this morning... and then finally we got out the door. All this by 10 am.
We walked to the park, then realized there was no shade there, so walked to a further park, where baruch Hashem my kids have been playing relatively decently, while I get a breather.
Of course, being in the park with the kids doesn't mean a complete break for me . While we were in the park, they wanted to eat 3! times already, managed to shmear themselves and my new clean skirt with cream cheese...
Best of all, I looked away for a second and saw my kids emptying out my pocket book, taking out my wallet and trying to help themselves to money. So I take my pocket book away and then the next second, they're running off with my pocket book, taking out the wallet and helping themselves to money, yet again. I rescue my pocketbook once more, this time putting it in the tree near me, because its not safe on the ground, so my kids try throwing bricks at the tree to knock down the pocket book until I reprimand them for doing something as dangerous as that. So instead, they spend the next 20 minutes trying (fortunately, with no success) to throw a ball at my pocketbook to knock it down.
Anyhow, what I'm trying to say is-
Everyone has hard days. Everyone has easier days.
Today, I lost my cool with my kids. Once. (Ok, twice.) The other times they made trouble, I tried to find the amusing aspect of it and laugh at it.
But people make a bigger deal out of things than they really are. I could just have easily summed up my morning today by saying "I woke up, fed the kids, cleaned up a little bit, the kids made a little trouble, so I took them to the park to burn energy."
Or I could write it the long drawn out way like I did above and try to make everyone see what a tough morning I had.
But what is the point?
Life is life. I can send my kids to camp if I wanted to. There is camp available for kids their age. And honestly, I've been feeling rather sick lately, throwing up a few times a day and feeling awful for the rest of it, and I HAVE strongly considered sending them out, but right now there are more important things for me to be spending money on than camp.
Would camp make my life a little more easy, a little more relaxed now? Most probably. Would my kids benefit from it? There's a good chance they will.
Are they deprived that they stay home this summer instead of going on trips, to the pool, playing games? Not having something good doesn't make you deprived; it makes you less privileged in that area. But there are all types of privileges, and while my kids may not have the privilege of going to camp, they have the privilege of more one on one attention than they'd get in camp. They have the privilege of a more relaxed day without needing to rush out the door to make the bus. They have the privilege of delicious, home cooked, healthy meals.
I am a parent. I have kids, for good or for bad. My kids happen to have a lot of energy, and Shmaya in particular is an an energizer bunny in addition to always being up to some trouble, but I try to look at the positive side and see that he is expressing his creativity and one day he'll be able to accomplish a lot because of all that extra energy.
Whats the point in pining away and looking over your shoulder at what everyone else has and moping that life is too difficult? Life is what you make of it- with a good attitude, most things can be overcome.
This thread is making me slightly uncomfortable, to be totally honest. While I agree that camp is certainly a luxury, a parent at the end of her wits is not someone who is "spoiled". A pregnant woman who is uncomfortable without air conditioning is not "spoiled". We are all capable of different things, and some women do not have the strength to care for 4 or 6 or however many children all summer without a break. Presuming that other women are capable of all that you can do is unfair, to put it bluntly. To say that these women are spoiled assumes a whole lot about their situation that nobody else is privy to.
When my children were younger the joke was that I was always the first one to sign my kids up for day camp..I needed camp. My kids needed camp. I worked during the school year and I felt I needed a break. I needed my kids to be happy and I needed to be happy. Then when my kids came home from day camp they were hungry and tired. After dinner and baths they were ready to play in the backyard..usually play camp but they could do that till bed time. You see I didnt have the energy or money to take them on all the trips and fun activities that day camp could. I couldnt sing all the songs and do the art and craft projects with them that t hey do at camp. It would cost more money for me to take them to all these fun places and hire some helpers to help me watch my kids and then I would be so tired and at the end of the day I wouldnt be that smiling mommy..I would be a tired out washcloth mommy. I feel that ..DAY CAMP IS NECCESARY FOR EVERYONE MOMMY AND CHILDREN. yes it is expensive but so is food, In my eyes they are both neccesary. Maybe there is a job u can do to bring down the price..shop..drive a van...ect..
When my kids started the overnight camp scene yes it was very expensive..but I wouldnt have it any other way. What they got out of overnight camp was almost more than they got out of school. They got the religios shot in the arm and the social part as well. They made friends from all over friends that they still have when they are older. I didnt have to worry what they ere going to do all evening..remember the older they get the more they need something strutured to do going to the library just wont do the trick. As the kids get older maybe they can get a job at camp...a mothers helper is almost always available. Money is always tight. There are always bills to pay. Your kids are only young once. I feel they need camp as much as the parent needs them to go to camp.
Camp such as you describe doesn't quite exist in Israel. In fact, I don't think it quite exists in the U.S. either, if it's affordable. Theres a LOT of down-time and lack of supervision in many Jewish camps. A lot of what we remember is wishful thinking. But I digress. Basically you are saying that if a kid doesn't get what you described, the kid didn't get a well-rounded summer? Vacation? Life? What about if the child lives in a country where most of what you describe doesn't exist? Should I, for example, send them to the U.S. for the summer so they get what they need? There are, actually, American families in Israel who do just that, but they pay for the pleasure as it's usually the rich families who choose to spend their money in that way.
I think it's great your kids went to camp and that they got so much out of it. The point is: what if a family cannot afford it and isn't getting tzedaka to cover it? Is it so terrible?
Seraph, chapeau! Kudos! Kol hakavod! You said it quite right although I have a feeling that some of the posters who were talking about four kids under six or five under seven would consider your situation gan eden...
For those who talk about big families - Ruchel I never said that one should use BC for financial reasons but rather for coping reasons. If a mother can't cope with her own kids and her idea of having kids is to have many and then farm them off on others and at the same time ask zedoko to pay for the care by those others, the problem isn't money. It starts with the mother herself who can't cope with the reality she created. Would she be able to cope better if she had the money for camp? Maybe, but why stop there, maybe she would cope better if she had a full time housekeeper and a full time nanny so that if she is home she can devote herself entiresly to whatever new baby is around just nursing and sleeping and diapering the baby while someone else takes care of her three, five, seven or nine older kids? Where does it end? with me, it ends when someone isn't capable of caring for their own cihldren and doesnt have the money to pay for others to help. Yes it's money but I'm not about to support all of am yisroel making them into basically walking uteruses whose entire input into their children will be for the first year or two years at which time they go over to be cared for by others as she is busy with the new baby. Over and over. Ten kids, twelve kids, why stop there? If you aren't nursing clean then in your reproductive life you can also have fifteen kids....which other people should raise for you because you don't have the koyach to do it? While you keep churning out new babies?
That's not being a mother in my book.
Isramom you are talking demographic imperative. See above. I truly believe that klal yisroel is not going to benefit from large numbers of children who are being neglected as their mothers don't have the emotional and physical stamina to care for them. And that people like me who had smaller families and went to work should pay for other women who choose to stay home and have large families but can't cope with the nitty gritty of caring for them, should be subsidized by me to have someone else care for their children. In my book, that can lead to a mockery of what a family is all about. Because what you seem to be claiming is "have babies no matter what as many as you can and then others will pay for you to get help with them if you can't cope".
No way. That creates a society of parasites. Is that what we want am yisroel to look like in another generation? I'm all for anyone having as many children as they want..as long as they can do it within the existing parameters of their lives, financial parameters, emotional parameters, physical parameters, geographic parameters, educational parameters. They can decide that they prefer to have many children who have less - less one on one time with a mother, fewer material goods, an OOT neighborhood etc. and it's their right to decide and carry it out. That's the tyranny of parents vis a vis their children. When their children grow up THEY can then decide what lifestyle they want.
but what you are advocating is parasitical anarchy. That a woman decides what she wants for her family, but that the "village raises the child".
No, that is a non jewish sentiment. It does NOT take a village to raise a child. Just ask women who raised children on the prarie with no neighbors. It does NOT take a village to raise a child. just ask women in communities where they were the only jewish or the only frum family.
I know someone whose parents lived for a while in South Dakota many years ago and she and her older sister were born there. Her younger siblings, three of them, were born at her father's next posting. She told me that of the "community" where her parents lived there were very Jews at all, and yet she is frum and another family from there had five kids as well all of whom stayed frum. No village. Two families. No day camp either. Different standards.
Why are Jewish women today so weak all of a sudden?
This thread is making me slightly uncomfortable, to be totally honest. While I agree that camp is certainly a luxury, a parent at the end of her wits is not someone who is "spoiled". A pregnant woman who is uncomfortable without air conditioning is not "spoiled". We are all capable of different things, and some women do not have the strength to care for 4 or 6 or however many children all summer without a break. Presuming that other women are capable of all that you can do is unfair, to put it bluntly. To say that these women are spoiled assumes a whole lot about their situation that nobody else is privy to.
In my non judgmental opinion, you would be right IF we were talking about isolated incidents where women just couldn't cope. However, there seems to be a whole generation out there who isn't coping. It's not just a lady here and there. It's ODD today to be able to cope, take care of your home without a cleaning lady, be a SAHM who raises her kids instead of a SAHF who farms the kids out as quickly as possible, oh... and is able to actually live within her budget and be happy about it. Totally oddball. That is what is being said over and over: THIS is reality. We NEED a cleaning lady for (choose one) our sanity, our health, our shalom bayit even though we are SAHM and in debt. We NEED our kids in school programs year round (chaval erev YT and the weekends are off) cause (choose one) we are busy nursing, are too stressed, the kids NEED friends at 18 months. We don't KNOW HOW to balance our budget and make our money match the length of the month etc. THAT is what normal is today.
I hope everyone likes the new normal.
FS - why does everything on imamother have to end up a birth control discussion? I agree with most of what you wrote on this thread, but I don't agree with your whole birth control argument. Because your argument doesn't take temporary situations into account - the bottom line is that no one should ever have a second child because they can't care for the first while they're pushing the second baby out.
IMHO, there is nothing wrong with the mothering skills of someone who is a SAHM who *sometimes* NEEDS her kids in kaytana/ camp, if that year is particularly hard for her - maybe she is postpartum, having a difficult pregnancy, just plain sick, or had a difficult year. (We are not discussing here working or WAHM mothers, or those who can afford it from their own pockets.) But there IS something wrong with the entire situation if year after year (and not just special circumstances this year) a mother says she cannot cope (unless we are talking about a chronic condition she has or a special needs child).
And EstherYK - you are missing the point again. This thread does not say no one should send to camp, or those who can afford it shouldn't send just because. It is only talking about people who cannot afford to pay for camp but have decided it's a necessity without any particular reason except that it's too hard/hot for them.
"Why are you so weak?" "Who told you to have so many kids?" "Why'd you choose to live in that awful place?"
"If I can do it, you can." "Choose the life I've chosen or don't complain." "Nothing is a big deal if you don't make it a big deal."
From my perspective, these posts sound so silly. You people have zero idea what you're talking about. You're projecting your life, pretending everyone else is living like you.
I said it before and I'll say it again, Al Tadin Es Chavercha Ad Shetagia Limkomo.
Seraph, chapeau! Kudos! Kol hakavod! You said it quite right although I have a feeling that some of the posters who were talking about four kids under six or five under seven would consider your situation gan eden...
Oh I don't doubt that my kids aren't the biggest vilde chayes in the world; obviously some kids are even more of a challenge to handle. Part of the reason they're less of a challenge is because I dont give them structure 24/7 and they learn how to entertain themselves, something kids in school all year and camp all summer don't really learn how to do...
My point really was, you can make anything into a bigger deal than it really is. But whats the point?
Last summer I was on maternity leave. I *could* have taken DS#1 out of tzaharon on May 19th (for June 1st). I chose to leave him in for the last month. I did NOT register him for tzaharon for July. He DID go to gan in the morning in July because he's chinuch meyuchad and it's part of the school year; I paid nothing for it. I DID cancel my extended hour for DS#2 at daycare.
So, in May I had DS#3 home, DS#2 out until around 3:45, and DS#1 out until around 4:15. Then I realized I was doing things backward (in terms of distance) and in June I reversed things: I'd pick up DS#1 around 3:15 (on foot; it was easier) then walk over to get DS#2 by 4:00. Even though DS#1 was paid for until 4:30; it was just more convenient to pick him up earlier. Of course, right at the beginning there were days that DS#3 was sleeping or needed to nurse right at 3:45. If he was asleep I had a neighbour come sit with him so I could pick up the older kids. If he needed to nurse I sent the neighbour to pick up DS#2 and when we finished nursing I took everyone to get DS#1. In July DS#1 got home around 2:00; we went to get DS#2 at 3:45. First week of August was like July (except that DS#1 had no morning programme, and my mom was here). From the 2nd week of August I had everyone home with me. My mom left on the 17th. By the time she left I had a routine going and it was smooth sailing!
Maybe my kids don't get dirty (ha!), or maybe I just don't care, but I don't ever recall having to change their clothes 3 or 4 times a day! The last week of June I kept DS#2 home for 3 days to toilet train him while I still had DS#1 out the whole day.
I don't know how well I would have managed if I had to jump right in with both feet rather than staggering it; I'm not used to being a SAHM. B"H I had the option to do it the way I did. But I know lots of women who have no choice but to jump right back into life, without kimpeturin homes/beit hachlama, without household help, and without camp. None of them has lost her mind yet. If you don't have money then, barring unusual circumstances, camp is a WANT, not a need. (And sorry, if you have a new baby every summer, by the 3rd time you should be a pro and it's no longer unusual circumstances! Unless, lo aleinu, you have a child with special needs.)
(And sorry, if you have a new baby every summer, by the 3rd time you should be a pro and it's no longer unusual circumstances
Oh, really? That sounds like me. Summer 1: new baby. Summer 2: Miscarriage at 13 weeks (read: 3 months of horrible morning sickness ending in a mis- do I need to go into details of what that's like or do women understand?) Summer 3: new baby. Summer 4: 7 months pregnant. Summer 6: new baby
So, if I understand correctly, each birth experience is exactly the same, every baby is exactly the same, and every toddler and older child is exactly the same. And life never changes, month to month or year to year. Oh, and everyone has the same kind of pregnancies. Morning sickness? Not so bad, what's there to complain about? Get out of bed and get to work.
Sorry, not processing, because that isn't real life. So I guess camp is a luxury when you aren't living real life.
Last edited by gryp on Thu, Jun 30 2011, 5:53 am; edited 1 time in total
FS, I also live in EY, but you're describing a gan eden that I don't know at all. either they're at camp or they'll wander around the house. for some kids, that's fine; for others, it's a recipe for disaster. gryp and EstherYK - right on! you can't compare women and you can't compare children, either.
[Marion: yes, most women can manage; there are some who don't and get sick or ... 'nuf said.]
I've also run gan ima in my day; actually, the less kids you have, harder it is to pull it off; they need who to interact with.
Last edited by grin on Thu, Jun 30 2011, 5:57 am; edited 1 time in total
[quote="Isramom8"]"go to your rebbe and get a heter so that it won't become eight kids under the age of ten and then you will fall apart leaving eight yesomin chas vesholom....'
This won't happen if camps are made more afforable. Sure, no kids = no need for camp, but zero growth rate in Klal Yisrael is not a good solution.
B"H my 8 year old is a normal boy. A normal 8 year old boy in 2011 can't spend many vacation days listening to a Tanach "tape" (you mean CD ;-)) and then writing up a summary. I have a son who probably can pretty happily, but then again, he is not typical.]
I was just thinking this. I don't think my kids at any point would have spent 2 hours on toilet paper. (A 6 y.o. perfectionist...incipient OCD?) But yeah, my older kids were kept quite happy by story tapes, Jewish, public library, etc. My youngest, a few years older than your son, doesn't have that kind of attention span. B"H we could work something out for camp. There would be nobody not in camp his age. We just got a call from a friend who's planning a family camp - mostly boys - and is inviting good friends to join their family, for a fee. Which adds up to more than our camp deal. But those would have been our only choices. I really wouldn't want to ruin my son by letting him sit in front of the computer even more than he does, twiddling his thumbs till the after camp ball games start.
(I should mention that I don't have kids the right age to run camp mommy myself at this point. It was a great run while it lasted.)
I have small kids. I take buses with small kids. I don't look forward to it, but it's hardly at the soul-sucking, insanity-creating level of difficulty either.
Anything sounds hard if you break it down like that. If I were to describe sending an email step by step it would sound like a lot of work. But in reality, you walk down the street, fold your stroller, keep an eye on the kids for a few minutes while waiting for the bus - not anything harder than what most people do each day (on that note - a "regular" day for many people doesn't involve time to themselves while the kids are in school).
I think the people describing how difficult it is looking after 6 children (mama bear, ronit) do not actually HAVE 6 children. Or even 4 or 5. (ok, they may have other circumstances that make life very diffiicult, but for those of us without those circumstances, things may be very different)
I have taken my (5) kids on buses many times and it is not such a big deal at all. In some ways I prefer it to driving. I avoid buses where you need to fold the stroller and try and stick to the wheelchair accessible buses.
I may only have 2 kids, but I ran a playgroup with up to 11 kids, aged 1 year to 3 years old, for 2 years... So I know what its like to have a whole bunch of kids. I watched the kids from 7:30 am until 2 pm. And if you could believe it, I only started having an assistant for 2 hours a day, 2 times a week when I got 11 kids midway through the year- when I had 10, I was on my own. And we went to the park. And did projects. I think those who make having 6 kids (some who are significantly older than 3! because yes, as shalhevet said, unless you're octomom or have multiples, if you have 6 kids, your oldest is at LEAST 5 years old, probably older.) into such a big deal are over dramatizing for "special effects", but anyone could do that.
Ok, so because you want to do it that way, I'll describe MY living circumstances.
I have my family of 4 living in a 454 square foot apartment. In case that isn't clear what it means, I have one tiny room that potentially could be used to have kids sleep there, but its 9 feet by 6 feet, and could only really hold one bed, and thats it, so instead we use it for storage, as we have no closets.
We have one kitchen/living room/dining room, but I should really leave out the word living room, as there's no room in it for a couch, only a 6 seater table (pushed against the wall), 4 chairs, a toy box, 3 book cases, and our fridge and oven.
Then we have a bedroom. It holds 2 beds, 2 night stands, 1 dryer (no room for it anywhere else), 4 shelves, and that's it. Again, no closets. No floor space. No place for a crib really. We co sleep partially from choice, and partially because if we put them in the other room we would have zero space to store anything, as a bed and the storage units cant be in the room simultaneously, and there isn't really room to have them sleep in our non existent living room, as there's no room there even for a couch, but if we really needed to, we'd put a mattress on the floor and tiptoe around it.
And did I mention we have no yard? No porch other than our front porch/vestibule/entrance to our home, thats about 8 feet by 8 feet and shared with a neighbor, and can't really be played on, can't put a pool there, as it would block the entrance to my neighbor's home?
And no air conditioning.
Did I mention it can get really hot?
And that I have no car?
So, let me describe my standard day. How about today?
The kids went to sleep last night rather late, even though I made sure not to allow them to nap in the afternoon. I wasn't feeling well, so I went to bed even later.
My husband wakes me up at 6 am this morning because he needed to tell me something important before he left for work. After talking for 20 minutes, I get back into bed, hoping for some more shut eye, but sleep is evading me, because I'm stressed out about what my husband told me. At 7 am, just as I am finally drifting off, I get rudely awakened by my downstairs neighbor playing the drums. Of course, that means Shmaya wakes up, and the first second he is awake, he turns to me and says with his eyes still sleepy "Hungry! Eat!" I debate what I can give him to eat without needing to actually get out of bed and stay out of bed. Cereal and milk isn't an option, because that means I'd find cereal in his hair, on the floor, shmeared all over his clothes... and that would mean giving a bath at 7 am. I want to stay in bed, but there's no possible way I would leave him unsupervised to eat breakfast, breakfast in bed it is.
So I crawl out of bed, get a banana, give it to him, and lay my head back down, all the while hearing
his chomping in my ear. Not 5 seconds later, he turns to me "More banana". So I get up and get him another one, but while I'm in the kitchen, he jumps on his brother and wakes him up, and now I have another customer for bananas.
Now that both kids are up, I have no choice but to get out of bed.
I get up and survey the wreck that my house is in. Last night, I was so wiped out from my kids shenanigans that I had no more energy to clean up, and I get faced with the mess today. I am having a guest for shabbos, and I have a wedding to go to friday morning, so that means all the shabbos prep has to be done today. I get to work washing the dishes so I can go make breakfast, and while I'm washing the dishes, I have to go over and get Shmaya off the dining room table. Then break up a fight between the boys over who gets to sit in which chair. Then rush over because they're about to throw the laptop computer onto the floor. In the meantime, I managed to get about 6 dishes washed, enough for me to have with what to make breakfast.
I give them breakfast and hand some to each kid, but then shmaya starts having a melt down because HE wanted to give Uriel his breakfast, and I gave it to him.
Then of course, the diaper change. I have to chase shmaya all over the house, with him laughing maniacally as he dodges my arms and gets away, yet again. I finally pin him down and realize that the diaper is far away, so I call in the troops (Uriel) to bring me a diaper and wipes so I can change Shmaya where he is instead of him running away again. When I have everything and am about to start, I get a phone call from someone that really frustrated me, leaving me in a snappy mood. I finally put down the phone, change the diaper, and put on a video for the kids, so I can get a moment's peace and check my email. Of course, in those 15 minutes, shmaya turned off the computer 3 times, so I kept on needing to run into the other room. Finally Shmaya left the computer alone, so I was able to breathe a little more, or so I thought. In the meantime, shmaya stripped the sheets off both beds, threw the pillows and the blankets on the floor, and decided to empty the laundry basket filled with laundry I hadn't sorted onto the lot.
Of course, thats a lot better than his usual game- emptying the bottom 4 shelves of my clothing shelves onto the floor so he and Uriel can climb onto the shelves while all the shoes are on the floor, mixed with all my underwear, socks, bras, undershirts, skirts, shirts... that just a few minutes before were sorted and folded on the shelves, but now need to be refolded and put back in....
And mildly better than his other favorite game- taking every single toy out of the toybox and throwing it across the room so it lands under the fridge or table or on the kitchen counter...
And of course, all this trouble usually happens under the coaxing of his older brother, who thinks that if he only TELLS shmaya to misbehave, but isn't making trouble himself, he can get off scott free.
But I digress.
I realized that the kids were acting like this because they were a little cooped up, so I tempted them with a trip to the park, hoping that it would get their moods up and allow me a bit of a breather without needing to worry about the destruction they're making...
I ask Shmaya to find his sandals, but he couldn't, so that meant searching all over for his shoes, only to find them right in front of his face. Then Shmaya found Uriel's sandals and brought them to him. I told Uriel to put on his sandals, but he started kvetching that he was incapable of doing it. (He puts on his sandals all the time on his own.) He starts walking around the house having a meltdown, saying "I can't put on my shoes. I don't know how. See? I'm a baby, I'm falling" and then dramatically swooning to the floor, screaming "Help me", and when I ignore him, he gets up, swoons again, screams again, all the while crying "I don't know how to put on my sandals!"
Eventually after 10 minutes of this shenanigans, I had enough. I put on his sandals, got together some food to take with us to the park, and then needed to change Shmaya's diaper again. Of course, we had another running away and maniacally laughing episode, as usual... And then I had to get changed because the kids got me filthy this morning... and then finally we got out the door. All this by 10 am.
We walked to the park, then realized there was no shade there, so walked to a further park, where baruch Hashem my kids have been playing relatively decently, while I get a breather.
Of course, being in the park with the kids doesn't mean a complete break for me . While we were in the park, they wanted to eat 3! times already, managed to shmear themselves and my new clean skirt with cream cheese...
Best of all, I looked away for a second and saw my kids emptying out my pocket book, taking out my wallet and trying to help themselves to money. So I take my pocket book away and then the next second, they're running off with my pocket book, taking out the wallet and helping themselves to money, yet again. I rescue my pocketbook once more, this time putting it in the tree near me, because its not safe on the ground, so my kids try throwing bricks at the tree to knock down the pocket book until I reprimand them for doing something as dangerous as that. So instead, they spend the next 20 minutes trying (fortunately, with no success) to throw a ball at my pocketbook to knock it down.
Anyhow, what I'm trying to say is-
Everyone has hard days. Everyone has easier days.
Today, I lost my cool with my kids. Once. (Ok, twice.) The other times they made trouble, I tried to find the amusing aspect of it and laugh at it.
But people make a bigger deal out of things than they really are. I could just have easily summed up my morning today by saying "I woke up, fed the kids, cleaned up a little bit, the kids made a little trouble, so I took them to the park to burn energy."
Or I could write it the long drawn out way like I did above and try to make everyone see what a tough morning I had.
But what is the point?
Life is life. I can send my kids to camp if I wanted to. There is camp available for kids their age. And honestly, I've been feeling rather sick lately, throwing up a few times a day and feeling awful for the rest of it, and I HAVE strongly considered sending them out, but right now there are more important things for me to be spending money on than camp.
Would camp make my life a little more easy, a little more relaxed now? Most probably. Would my kids benefit from it? There's a good chance they will.
Are they deprived that they stay home this summer instead of going on trips, to the pool, playing games? Not having something good doesn't make you deprived; it makes you less privileged in that area. But there are all types of privileges, and while my kids may not have the privilege of going to camp, they have the privilege of more one on one attention than they'd get in camp. They have the privilege of a more relaxed day without needing to rush out the door to make the bus. They have the privilege of delicious, home cooked, healthy meals.
I am a parent. I have kids, for good or for bad. My kids happen to have a lot of energy, and Shmaya in particular is an an energizer bunny in addition to always being up to some trouble, but I try to look at the positive side and see that he is expressing his creativity and one day he'll be able to accomplish a lot because of all that extra energy.
Whats the point in pining away and looking over your shoulder at what everyone else has and moping that life is too difficult? Life is what you make of it- with a good attitude, most things can be overcome.
Seraph, while I respect what you do, I'm going to say loud and clear that if you don't feel the need to send your kids out, then you probably don't need to. Those who feel the dread of being a shmatte each day with the kids around, know that they need the kids out of the house.
It isn't a secret that I'm practically the last one left on this side of the Earth with no cleaning lady. I also keep my kids home till age 3. I am capable of some things but not others. Could I keep all my kids home if it was a life/death situation? Sure. Am I going to do that under regular circumstances? No way. I need some normal time each day. And what's normal for me isn't necessarily normal for others.
Sorry, not processing, because that isn't real life. So I guess camp is a luxury when you aren't living real life.
And I am even sorrier. Being pg and/or having a baby every year isn't living real life, either. I can't process that part. And you calling it real-life doesn't make it so. It's your CHOICE to make that real life. In real life, people have the number of children they can handle mentally, physically and financially. If you had just one kid, were a SAHM, and had zero money would camp be a luxury? Of course it would. So how does having a bunch of kids (your choice) and presumably less money make it no longer a luxury? Please, enlighten me.
I know someone whose parents lived for a while in South Dakota many years ago and she and her older sister were born there. Her younger siblings, three of them, were born at her father's next posting. She told me that of the "community" where her parents lived there were very Jews at all, and yet she is frum and another family from there had five kids as well all of whom stayed frum. No village. Two families. No day camp either. Different standards.
Why are Jewish women today so weak all of a sudden?
Oh please, why is there not a huge thriving Jewish metropolis in Nebraska? Or in many places across the fruited plans that had chashuve rabbanim and some semblance of community? It takes exceptional strength to do what you describe. And even those with exceptional strength don't always see such peiros; that 3/4 of my grandfather's siblings stayed frum in early 20th century America was something of a peleh.
And I won't even mention kol Yisrael areivim, and that no one person can perform all 613 mitzvos, we need other people and thrive in a community with an infrastructure. No, I won't mention that.
We don't need to impel women who are struggling to beat themselves up more than they are.
And yeah, the people who live in NY: I feel for you. But I understand that you may not have a choice. There aren't Satmar colonies in the midwest, and this "kan tziva" business - not my mesorah but yours - also sets certain parameters. But that's why your communities are more likely to offer high levels of social support.
I agree with most of what you wrote on this thread, but I don't agree with your whole birth control argument. Because your argument doesn't take temporary situations into account - the bottom line is that no one should ever have a second child because they can't care for the first while they're pushing the second baby out.
