Generally, women are expected to be a good organizer, a role-model, a nurturer, and a mouldering. This seems to come naturally to them, which is why women are the natural coordinator of the home.
However, motherhood is different ball game entirely; it demands one’s attention entirely and it seems to require the whole essence of a woman in other to make a success of it. Motherhood comes in different stages, and a woman is expected to transit from one stage to another effortlessly.
The early stage of motherhood comes with all the excitement and fun; it is the elementary stage of learning parenting and it comes with a lot of experimentations and discoveries. No two humans are exactly the same, so, whatever one has learned from the older and experienced mothers can NEVER be replayed in your own individual life experience.
The second stage of motherhood is the stage of teaching and impartation; this is when you as a mother take up the responsibility of the mother/teacher. At this stage, the child is conscious of his/her surrounding, and asks a lot of questions. The child is already a student, at home and probably at a crèche or a nursery school, learning new things and coming home to ask more questions. As a mother, you need to read a lot ( if you have not learned enough from your own mother), about how to handle the fragile personality that is evolving before your very eyes! You need to be able to shape/mould this personality into a responsible and matured adult that he/she will become. It takes a lot of patience and hard work to juggle the activity at this stage.
The third and final stage is the most critical, sensitive and boring! (My personal opinion). At this stage, whatever you have been doing right all along becomes ineffective, and you now need to learn new ways of handling the world-wise, and digitally experienced child. Welcome to a new life!
Here, you MUST thread softly, else you will break a bone or bruise a feeling, and the consequences may be disastrous. It takes much more than skill or experience to handle the situation at this stage; the adolescent years are usually the most difficult period both for the child and the parents and for the child / parent relationship. At this stage, you need your gut feeling as a mother, all the experiences you have gathered in life so far, a lot of prayers, and an unending doses of patience. These will go a long way in cushioning the effect of the heat you will feel at this stage.
As a mother, when you get it wrong here, it may ruin your hard work for the rest of your life. So, you need to go the extra mile here; read a lot more about this stage in the life of a child and the different techniques to deploy in handling things. You need to be liberal without being lax, deploy discipline without being harsh, show understanding without being unreasonable; communicate, communicate, communicate (you can never have enough of it), and be VERY PATIENT. With much prayers, you will succeed and can sit back and look forward to a rewarding old age. Who says motherhood can not be fun?!
