By Amy L. Hatch & Laura Weisskopf Bleill
In honor of our beta launch, we thought we’d ask our own mothers what it was like for them to raise children and manage a household. After all, most of the lessons we learned were at their knees. Now that we’re rearing our own kids, their role in our lives has been thrown into stark relief.
Here’s what they have to say about motherhood and being grandparents.
Q:What do you like to do with your grandkids when you visit Chambana?
Bernice Hatch: This is an easy one, I like to hug and kiss them first of all. I enjoy doing things with them that their parents cannot, such as taking Emmie to the movies. I take pleasure most of all doing everyday things with them so that I feel like I am a part of their lives when I am there.
Bonding with children is not about taking them to an amusement park, although I would jump at the chance to do that. It is about taking care of them, bathing them, making them lunch, reading to them, sometimes putting them to bed and of course, knowing what their lovies are and when they need them. I was last in Urbana for Halloween, seeing the kids in their costumes, glowing with anticipation and excitement is something no grandparent should miss.
Barbara Weisskopf: I enjoy going to the Market at the Square and watching Nessa enjoy the music. I also enjoy taking her to Prairie Farm to see the animals.
Q: What’s better about being a grandparent than a parent?
Bernice Hatch: That is obvious! It’s about being able to spoil our grandchildren in a way that we would have never been able to consider with our children. The relationship between grandparent and grandchild is so different, unless the role of primary caretaker has been taken on.
A grandparent is a bonus relationship for a child and a joy for grandma. I say this because my own children did not have grandparents that were active members of their lives. As grandparents, we have the opportunity to reinforce family values that our children are/have imparted to our little ones while indulging them. My house is the DMZ for my grandchildren. While I maintain my children’s parameters in terms of discipline and expectations I can give them ice cream when I want and then send them home. That makes me the hero!
Barbara Weisskopf: You can be in the moment with your grandchildren, because you have the time and nothing is more important. Pure joy and fun.
Q: What was your biggest parenting challenge?
Bernice Hatch: Where do I start? Having three children with three distinctly different personalities, it is difficult to choose one challenge. The challenges were many, they still are as parenting has no end no matter the ages of your children.
Being a parent is fluid as your children grow. In retrospect (you know what they say about hindsight), I think choosing my battles and focusing on the lessons that would make the difference between helping my children be productive human beings vs. being overly concerned about the state of their bedrooms would have been good. I lucked out, I have three very productive children who understand the responsibility of “giving back.”
Barbara Weisskopf: My biggest challenge was finding a way to help my son when he was having learning difficulties in school. I had to accept the need to send him away to a private school to give him a chance to succeed academically and socially. The separation was extremely painful, but effort proved to be very positive for my son.
Q: How do you think motherhood has changed since you had young children?
Bernice Hatch: I believe that children have to be more sophisticated in today’s world. They grow up faster. I think this is double-edged sword for kids. It brings more pressure early in life, and while this builds life skills, it also impinges on their childhood somewhat.
Barbara Weisskopf: Children could go out and play freely without fear. Children were not as programmed as they are today.
Q: Is there anything you would do differently in terms of being a mom?
Bernice Hatch: YES! It’s that hindsight thing again. I married young and had my first child at 20. If I had been older I would have been more patient, and the line between what was important to me and important to Amy would have been clearer to me. I would have yelled less: this is not a good memory I have of myself. Although I don’t ever remember what the circumstances were or what I was yelling about, I remember the yelling. I wish I had been able to temper that.
Barbara Weisskopf: I would have played more games with my children.
Q: How did you survive without car seats and baby monitors?
Bernice Hatch: Amy’s friends always recount having to wear their seat belts in my car when they were teenagers long before it was the law. In terms of monitors, that is a good question. Maybe we got more sleep and were roused only when our kids were serious about needing us in the middle of the night. I never missed a call for “mommy” in the middle of the night. Huge houses were also not the standard then so that helped.
Barbara Weisskopf: We were lucky nothing happened to our babies. Baby monitors are a wonderful thing, especially with the camera. I was always running upstairs to check on my children.
Q: Do you think parents today over-think things?
Bernice Hatch: Yes, I do, but so did I. Parents are handed a lot of psycho-babble today about their kids and the many ways they can be harmed by a harsh word. I disagree. Kids have a steep learning curve and they learn by example, we all know this. So some days are harder than other for parents and we have moments when we are not so patient. The child learnsthat no one is perfect and it is OK to be angry sometimes. I think that at the end of the day, if your child comes away with an overall feeling of being loved, then you have done a good job as a parent. Better to have expectations for a child than to neglect them.
Barbara Weisskopf: Some do. Go with you gut instinct. It is usually right.
Q: What lessons do you hope I learned from you?
Bernice Hatch: Love, and I know you learned that from both me and your dad. It’s human nature to learn what not to do with your kids from your parents, no matter what kind of parent you had. That is what I hope you learned most of all — no one is perfect and we all make mistakes. I can say this because I know you are a loving, gentle, intelligent mother. I hoped your learned is that parenting never ends, until perhaps the tables turn and the child becomes the caretaker. I hope this never happens, but I know that if I ever need you this way, you will be there. You reap what you sow.
Barbara Weisskopf: There is no place like “home.”