Why I do everything for my son and I’m not ashamed of it

Since childhood we have heard: “Come on, learn, grow! Will you depend on your mother until old age?”. And gradually we got used to the fact that we shouldn’t ask for help, just as we shouldn’t expect someone to take care of us, because if you don’t have help from your mother, imagine from other people. That way, we learn to deal with life’s little problems, but maybe we end up missing something important along the way?

I, author of incredible.club, I’m tired of hearing criticism from others for doing some simple things for my grown son, and I wanted to share with our readers why I’m not ashamed of it. Besides thinking I’m doing the right thing. Check out!

My teenage son still doesn’t know how to tie his shoelaces. He brings me his size 40 sneakers, looks at me pleadingly and says: “Mom, tie my shoelaces!”. My mother-in-law complains: “Why did we put him in the best school? Why did we give you the best toys?” My husband laughs: “He will only learn when his mother gets pregnant”. My friend tries to make up my mind: “You are treating a grown boy like a child!”.

He’s taller than me, but I’ll tie his shoelaces, I’ll always make sure his school uniform is in order, and I’ll buy him chocolate and marshmallows when he’s sad. I’ll fix his scarf and wave out the window when he’s on his way to school. You can consider me crazy and say: “What kind of man are you creating?”. I don’t want to raise a man, I want to raise a happy person who is able to take care of others and accept being taken care of too.

My son helps me carry the day-to-day burden, he always helps me with the housework, and if my friends’ children are present, he is patient, attentive and happy to stay with the little ones, inventing lots of things to do with them. I hate hanging laundry, and he knows it, so when he hears the washing machine finish, he comes to the rescue and saves me from this tedious task. He is always available to help dad or me. So, given all that, I don’t care if he doesn’t know how to tie his shoelaces, I do it without even questioning it, even if he manages to tie it.

I also know how to hammer nails, change tires and fix a zipper when it gets stuck all the time, but if I don’t have time, my husband does it for me. He arranges my scarf, and I his. That’s how our family works: whoever has the easiest time with something is the one who does it. Anyone who wants to take care of someone else doesn’t think: “Wow, doesn’t he know how to make tea? What kind of man is this?”

Once, a relative came to visit us. My son made waffles for breakfast and ended up messing up the entire kitchen. He still cleaned it up, but there was putty everywhere. While my aunt had tea, I started to clean up the rest. “Are you going to spoil him until he gets married?” she asked. “Tell him to clean the kitchen.” I bet no one in her house would do anything to please someone else.

For my aunt, it’s normal to pull the man over, show him what he’s done, and then comment on his clumsiness. That’s why her kids and her husband will never get up early to make her breakfast. Cooking is a mother’s duty. In this way, the entire family structure is based on everyone dealing with their own affairs. We, on the other hand, are considered lazy, because the one who is less tired or does a certain task better is the one who takes responsibility. If a son wanted to make waffles for his mother, it doesn’t hurt for her to clean up the mess afterward.

But preventing my aunt from planting discord inside my house is not an easy task. She called my son. He came running over, and instead of saying thank you for the waffles, she said, “Take your mother’s cloth and clean it yourself. Can’t you see you’ve messed everything up?” The ability to make the situation even more inconvenient is my aunt’s talent.

“No son. Thank you, I can clean. The waffles were delicious!” I said, kissing my son and turning him towards the door. “Go do your thing”. So the discussion started: “Are you going to take care of him until he has white hair? Are you going to keep cleaning after you’re old?” This part of talking about old age, for some reason, is a must-have topic for those who advocate that children should do everything themselves. They often play this questioning whenever their children are trying to get attention or asking for help. But the truth is that children have to deal with things on their own because the mother is busy – that’s the truth.

Of course, it would be great to take my aunt to the station, put her on a train, and ask her not to come back until she learns something more important than tying her shoelaces or cleaning up after messes—like, say, not meddling in other people’s business. . But instead, I had to listen to his bullshit for another half hour and explain, yet again, that our son is being raised by my husband and I. Good or bad, that’s our responsibility, not hers.

Come on, there are many other people around me who think that I am raising my child wrong, that I can’t even help with the little things, because then I will ruin the whole “preparation for adult life”. And what does adult life demand of us? To never depend on anyone, never ask for or expect help, and never admit our weaknesses? Well, it wouldn’t surprise me if in the future such an independent guy didn’t worry about helping his wife with the child, because she, after all, would know how to handle everything on her own.

And that’s why it’s necessary to educate, and not just boys. At a parent conference, the mother of my son’s classmate, whose daughter was always 5-10 minutes late, proudly stated that the little one was not on time because she was a busy nurse, and did not help her with that because otherwise the daughter would never learn to be responsible. Seriously? Never? Is it better to leave the child crying in the bathroom ashamed to enter the classroom and be scolded by the teacher and be laughed at by classmates?

Well, as the cat Behemoth from the book The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov, said, “history will judge us”. If we are right or not in following our principles in the education of our son, time will tell. And now, while my husband, who is working from home today, is cleaning my car downstairs, I am tying my son’s shoelaces to get him to school on time. Because we are used to relying on each other and helping even in small ways.

Do you think it’s important for the child to learn to deal with small day-to-day problems on their own or should the parents help with that? Tell us in the comments section.