International is normal

These last two days I've had quite different lunches to what I usually do. Let me give you a taste.

Monday
On Monday I joined with a group of five other mums who have children in grade nine at CAJ. We ate lunch at one of their houses. This was not an ordinary lunch, and that's due to the ladies who were present.

Yummy Asian lunch!

I was the only 100% Caucasian lady there. The other ladies were various combinations of Korean, US, Japanese, and Chinese. And by various combinations, I mean that my background was one of the least complicated (I've only lived in two countries and I'm the same nationality as my husband and both my parents and the country I grew up in). Two or three of them are raising multiple nationality kids too (husbands with a different nationality than the wife). Conversation ranged between English, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, so I'm not sure that anyone got 100% of what was said, least of all me, probably the least multilingual person there.

The food reflected the ladies present: a lot of Korean, plus some Japanese and possibly more (what's honey mustard chicken?). It was super tasty.

I'm accustomed to conversation about different Englishes, but these multilingual ladies were doing the same with Korean/Japanese/Chinese. If I knew more of these languages it would have been even more fascinating and there are many links between these three languages.

Tuesday
On Tuesday I went across the city to our national headquarters for a couple of meetings, mostly related to me handing bits of my jobs over to others while we're away. In between meetings I got to work in a room called "The Island"! 

My meetings included my Scottish boss (who is pretty fluent in Japanese), another Aussie, a man from Britain who grew up in Japan, an American who is ethnically Japanese and grew up in Japan with an American family, and a lady from Hong Kong. International is our normal!

Our Japan OMF headquarters is aquatic-themed.
This room is called "The Island", upstairs are two meeting
rooms called "The Stream" and "The River". Down the
hall the finance team works in "The Oasis"!

Lunch was with the various people working at the office that day. Our little table had three British people, all who've been in Japan for longer than me, and a bilingual Japanese lady. Topics ranged considerably, from blue cheese, to the Royal Wedding, and ingrown toenails (really!). My semi-regular Facebook status of Wednesday Words came up too, and they had some suggestions! Braces vs retainers, braces vs suspenders, tute for tutorial, trousers vs pants. Such fun, talking about language.

Today
Meanwhile today, I'm back at my little desk in my dining room, trying to discipline myself to attend to little bits and pieces of followup from yesterday as well as other ongoing things that need doing. (But instead of powering through I'm writing a blog post...) 

It's weird to be divvying up my job to give to others and hard to stay motivated for the "now" or to get motivated for the "coming". I swerve between feeling scared about ditching work and feeling relieved! Maybe you don't understand the former feeling, but I have an underlying fear of boredom that sometimes (or maybe more than sometimes) drives me.

Ah, transition. Never easy, no matter how it looks. I know I'll eventually get around to embracing the freedom of handing over these jobs, but at the moment I feel a little like I'm balancing on a slab of ice in the middle of a lake.

Back in Tokyo

I'm physically back in Tokyo, but still struggling to get my head back into the right space. These last two weeks were very tiring, as I predicted. Last week was more emotional than I'd foreseen, though, and I think that has also taken its toll. I have to say that I'm enjoying a less social week this week!

However, in the meantime life continues onwards as usual. I got home at 11pm on Friday night, after leaving Sapporo at 3pm. I got about five hours sleep before we got up and went to our sons' track and field meet. Thankfully, though it was an early start, I didn't have to drive or take the train, and I was able to sit beside David as he drove the team and catch up. Last week was so busy that we weren't able to talk even once. Then, because we arrived early (CAJ helps run these events, so if you travel with the team you're always early), I was able to lie down in the bus for a while.

I even managed, with the aid of coffee, to take some half-decent photos and talk to people.

A discus photo for some variety.

David and some friends also organised for me to get a lift home a bit earlier than if I'd travelled with the team.

But despite my exhaustion, it was a good day. The temperature was about perfect (low 20s) and we sat under trees, so there was no concern about sunburn. The atmosphere was quite relaxed and picnic-like.

Last week was interesting, in that many of the people at the workshop are single or have no children. It's quite a different dynamic to the people I usually hang out with. They were a bit horrified at what I was planning to do on Saturday, but for me it is just what you do as a mum. When your children are little, you get up during the night to help them. As they get older you go to their performances, their school events, and watch them use their skills and abilities, even if it means getting less sleep than you need. It does mean that I have less energy to do ministry than if I didn't have kids, but being a mum to my children is also an important role that God's given me.

The other event that's happened since I returned was our youngest turning 13! We celebrated quietly at home in the usual fashion (for us) with a cake, presents, and a meal he requested. It's the first time we've had a "boy birthday" without one of the boys around, so that was weird and will take some getting used to. The boy who's gone will also need to figure out what he's going to do about birthdays etc. when he's on the other side of the ocean to us.

But now the "working week" has begun and I'm trying to work my way through the various tasks that await, including a whole lot of deadlines that I've already missed. The weather is gorgeous and I'd love to go for a ride tomorrow, but I'm not sure whether I want to walk away from my desk for several hours to do that or not. But don't worry, I'm not totally neglecting myself. I read an entire 400 page novel over the weekend. Yesterday I went to the dentist for a regular checkup and this afternoon I have a massage and haircut scheduled which involves a 6-9k ride (depending on the route I take).

My Mother's Day

We kept Mother's Day very simple here. No presents (for me, we sent presents to our mums in Australia), just a ride to a fancy coffee shop for morning tea after church.

I've tended to keep my expectations low in recent years. Not because my family doesn't love me, but because, well, unmet expectations just leads to disappointment. I found a more positive way of looking at Mother's Day (and my birthday) in this article I saw on FB yesterday. 

It talks about how Mother's Day shouldn't be a day when we expect to be compensated for all the sacrificing we do all the other days of the year, it's not a day for payback. "If our identity is tied to how well we're appreciated, we're setting ourselves up for disappointment."

If our identity is bound up with our to-do list, then appreciation will help for a bit, but not in the long run. Our identity is more stable if we remember it's not about who we are and what we do, but about who Jesus is. It's easier to have an incredible Mother's Day if we "stand in awe of the One who made [us] a mother." 

So today I've just been simply grateful for the blessings I've been given. 

I know that many desire to be a mother, but aren't able. I'm thankful I have kids, even though that too is often a painful, difficult job. 

I know that many have had kids that they no longer have the privilege of still having with them today (be they not on this earth any more, or they've lost contact with their kids for whatever reason etc.). I'm thankful my kids are all living and here with me for now. Next year I won't have all my kids at home anymore, one will be in Australia, Lord willing.

I know that many, many are missing their own mums today. While my own mum is now with me today, she is still alive and I'm looking forward to seeing her in just nine days!

But most of all I'm thankful that God is faithful (and this is the third main point of the article I've linked to above), he is faithful in providing me with the energy and wisdom each day to be a mum to these intelligent, active, not-perfect boys. He's kept me (and them) alive thus far. He's given me a husband to help me be the best mum I can be and he's also still with me. And, even—God's with me every day. 

So it doesn't matter that there was grumbling about the length of the ride to the coffee shop. That there were complaints about how little food we got for our money (fancy coffee shop!). It doesn't matter that I did most of the chores I usually do. I had a good Mother's Day and it didn't depend on the people I share my life with.

Parenting and overdoing it

I'm sitting around at 5pm on a Friday, trying to figure out what to put here on this blank page. All I can think about is how much time parenting still takes, even though my boys are 17, 14, and 11. 

Grocery shopping is one part of my life influenced by how
many kids I have in my family and how much they eat. 

This afternoon, with two boys gone on school trips (and my husband too), it is all too quiet around here. It makes me think about how much time I usually spend in my day doing things that I only do because I have children (or, perhaps more of what I would normally do, such as grocery shopping or food preparation which takes longer because there are five of us). 

I guess I should start getting used to it. It won't be too long before we are one boy less, with our eldest son graduating in June and heading back to Australia next February and from then on things just gradually decrease, with my youngest, Lord willing, graduating in just six more years.


Because, as a mum, children take up so much of your time over so many years, it is easy to fall into the trap of feeling that that it is your purpose, your main reason for being on this earth, and that there is nothing else worth doing. Yet, it is not so. I had a life before I had kids. (They're always surprised to hear that.) It's going to take some rediscovering, but I'll have it again—a life without kids in it on a daily basis. After 24 years of parenting it will take some getting used to, but I'm already dreaming about the possibilities.

Now the challenge: can I transition from that train of thought into what I really want to post today?

Here's my transitioning thought: because parenting takes up more time than you think, it's easy to take on too much outside the family. 

This is especially true for cross-cultural workers. I had lunch with four other mums from our mission today. We've got kids across a range of ages: from  twenty-two down to four years old. We talked about this and generally agreed that parenting as a cross-cultural mum takes more time and emotional energy that it would if we were in our home countries. This is especially around times of major transition.

Earlier this week I saw this post that talks about the need for caution when it comes to taking care of ourselves, especially as those in cross-cultural ministry.

I was shocked a few years ago when I read that someone was calling for more accountability of cross-cultural workers, that the writer's experience included many who were lazy, who weren't wise in how they spent their time, and that the churches supporting them needed to call them to account. That is not my experience at all. 

Most cross-cultural workers I see tend to have trouble stopping. At least that is the case in Japan. They need to be urged to take holidays and retreat times. They need articles like the one I've linked to above to remind themselves to take care of themselves.

Here's quote from the article:

I must choose each moment to live above the guilt and rest in the certainty that God loves me more than he needs me. If I disable myself by recklessly overdoing, I do a disservice to Him and to those who love me.

It makes me think of parenting again. If I get into the mode of thinking my purpose is to be a mum, if being needed by them is my main reason for living, that leads to a bad place. And it isn't helpful for the phase of life that I'm standing on the precipice of: when my boys won't "need" me as intensely and daily as they used to.

Someone else who has written about slowing down recently is our Japan Field Director. He's been battling two types of blood cancer for about a year now. He's currently recuperating at home after a particularly rigorous round of chemo and a stem-cell transplant. He's a high achieving fellow, who, by his own words, used to "whizz...around like a hare". These days life for him is more like the famous tortoise. Here are some of the words from a Facebook post of his earlier in the month:

All of this has got me thinking about what it means to slow down. And it has got me thinking about what the Bible has to say about the pace of life. Certainly when you ponder the Bible generally, there are many examples of ‘waiting’ and ‘perseverance’, topics I've explored in earlier musings. The word ‘patience’ or ‘patiently’ comes up not a few times. But when I thought of the word ‘slow’ I couldn't think of many specific examples apart from a few well-known verses. So, the Lord is slow to anger. In the same way, we should be slow to anger and slow to speak (but quick to listen!) Peter speaks about slowness towards the end of his second letter in the context of time - with the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day. 

As I considered this more, I came across this translation of Jeremiah 2:25. It's from The Message, so a paraphrase but nonetheless it makes the point very graphically - “Slow down. Take a deep breath. What's the hurry? Why wear yourself out? Just what are you after anyway? But you say, 'I can't help it. I'm addicted to alien gods. I can't quit.'” We may not be addicted to ‘alien gods’ but could we simply be addicted to activity and busyness? And all of that could just be a ‘chasing after the wind’ as one of the Bible’s wisdom books puts it. Or as one of the Psalms says - ‘in vain you rise early and stay up late’. There are quite a few ‘ouch’ passages in the Bible when we measure them against what our daily lives are actually like.

Many of us these days seem to live life simply moving from one thing to the next with little time in between to catch our breath, far less having time to reflect, meditate or even spend some unrushed time with God. And that can creep into family life, church life, corporate life, organisational life. There is so much to keep up with. But that begs some questions. Why do we need to keep up with the things we feel we need to keep up with? And are the things that we strive to keep up with the things we really need to be keeping up with at all? One valuable lesson that can be learned in the slow lane is simply to be able to take stock, reassess and consider what the priorities in life really ought to be. 

None of this is to say we should be lazy or live a life of constant leisure. There is plenty the Bible can teach us about that. But for a follower of Jesus, what should mark us out as different, what are the things that day by day should be core to our lives? Certainly we would want to serve him wholeheartedly and live our lives in a way that brings glory to his name. But while we might desire to be ‘about the Lord’s work’ to use an older phrase, that does not seem to me to mean that we should simply be dashing around in a constant blur of activity. As I have this time in the slow lane, I sometimes wonder whether as Christians, as churches, as mission organisations, we can easily get off track because we are so busy and active that we can actually no longer see the wood for the trees. And I know that as I say that, I am gradually needing to remove the plank from my own eye (if a tortoise can have a plank in its eye). Being forced to slow down is teaching me many things. I just hope I can apply these lessons well if I ever reach the point once again when I am healthy, energy-filled and able to be active. Help me God even then to be still and know that you are God.

Hmm, good words to ponder. I've got a quiet weekend coming up. I am not good at being still, I get bored easily, though I am quite tired right now. I'm praying that God will help me to be still a bit this weekend, and not too restless.

The value of a mother

Well of course I had to put a wrestling photo with this! Being
a mum supporting my kids as they play sport (or what ever
thing it is, for example music, is very important. The value
of presence is easy to overlook. Your presence at their
sporting events speak volumes about your
love for them. And if you can't be present, at the very least
your interest, your enquiries as to how it was, do not go
unnoticed by our kids.

I have been functioning as a single mum (basically) for 11½ of the last 14 days. It isn't fun, but I've had much worse times with David away (though never as long). Now the boys are older it is a lot easier. But I still get stuck at times, without any other parent to lean on or consult with it can be really tiring and it's easy to lose perspective (evidence: my blog post two days ago).

In the next two weeks I'm getting my parenting "holidays"; it's my turn to go away. On Sunday I leave for Bangkok to receive some leadership training with our mission. I'll be back next Saturday. Then the week after that I go away to a Women in Ministry retreat for two nights—finally we have a one of us going away, but not overseas, this retreat is in far western Tokyo!

I saw this article today by a guy (Jason Ingle) encouraging us mums (especially those of us who are parenting in cultures we didn't grow up in) not to doubt our value as mums. It is easy, in whatever living situation you are, to devalue your importance as a mum.

Why?

1. When they're tiny they are so needy, in fact they remain very needy for many years. But in their neediness they don't express much gratitude. 
2. The things you do as a mum you do over and over again. The rewards are slow in coming and many days you wonder if you've achieved anything at all. It's easy to wonder if you have no value.
3. One thing often comes with teenagers is a certain disdain for their mothers. It's part of growing up and gaining independence. In a quiet, sane moment I understand that. But it still hurts and adds further fuel to the feeling that your role as a mum is not so important.
4. As they get older they aren't quite so obviously needy (although any teenager who can't find their clothes, or who doesn't get a reasonable meal after a long day at school would probably disagree). But the day-in day-out drudgery of motherhood continues. It just looks a little different.
5. I use that word "drudgery" purposefully. That is what it often feels like and the work never seems to end. You begin to wonder, even as they start to tower over you, if your job as their "carer" will never end. Will all this training, all this work I've put into parenting this child ever produce an adult who can take care of themselves and be a valuable member of society?

And that's just a few reasons.

I've been a mum now for nearly 17 years. I still need the assurance that the article I've linked to provided.

Yes, you are important, you are necessary. It's easy for those of us who are "paid" to do "ministry" to feel as though being a mother is cheating somehow, that we need to do a lot of work outside the family in order to be valuable, to be worth what we're "paid".

To anyone feeling that way, Jason writes:

Moms, you are valuable, even when you don’t hear it from the rest of the world very much. You are valuable even when you look around and are tempted to believe the lie that you have nothing to contribute to the “real ministry” happening around you. Being a mother IS full time ministry!

But even more importantly:

As I’ve said before and will repeat until I die, no matter your role or stage of life, when you wonder about your value you need to look to only one place: the cross. At the cross the creator of this universe sacrificed His only Son because He values you. Your value comes not from what you do, but who you ARE in Him because of what He already did. He also highly values your role as a mother. 

My life verse for parenting is: 

"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up" (Galatians 6:9, NIV).

Being a Wrestling Mum Today!

Today we're in Melbourne, supporting our eldest son at the Australian National Youth Championships. This is the first formal wrestling meet we've ever been to in Australia, so we're interested to see how it all works. The thing I'm most intrigued about (besides how my son does against his fellow competitors) is the huge number of categories they have.

In Japan, among the American-style international schools, there are middle schoolers and high schoolers and they don't wrestle at the same tournaments. The middle schoolers are organised according to weight and experience. Amongst the high schoolers there is only about 12 weight categories. No age categories are used in either group. But check out this set of categories. Phew!

I'll let you know later how it all goes!

Wrestling Mums Club

There's a photo I wish someone had taken yesterday while we were at another wrestling event.

We had lots of family members supporting the team. One reason is because we were at the closest international school to CAJ, less than an hour's drive. Another reason is that the school (American School in Japan) was hosting a number of other sports events yesterday, including a middle school wrestling tournament, which meant there were a number of other CAJ supporters around who mightn't have come if it was just high school wrestling.

It was particularly exciting to have the company of a number of other wrestling mums. The photo I would have liked was of about half a dozen of us mums lined up on the bleachers (what do Australians call seating at a sporting event?) cheering for the team. I believe we made so much noise at one point that one of the usually unflappable referees turned to look at us in a break in the action! There usually aren't many women around these events. I've been getting around in rather a man's world, so it was great to have some feminine companionship. 

One of the new middle wrestlers was supported by his mum and two of his three big sisters and one of their friends (that's a total of four women!). The family is Filipino and none of them has ever seen much wrestling before this year, so they were a bit wide-eyed. Another mum and I spent some time helping his mum understand the rules (as I wrote back here it is very difficult to follow if you don't understand some of what's going on). I asked his sisters what their early impressions were and they said, "The gym is smelly!" She didn't understand why they got all sweaty. As my husband said, "She's obviously got no idea how hard it is to flip someone over on their back who doesn't want to be flipped over!"

But I was impressed by this new member of the "Wrestling Mums Club". The middle school wrestling was first up (we didn't arrive with the high schoolers until after 10am), followed by several hours of high school wrestling. She stayed, with her kids, at watched the high schoolers until 3pm, wanting to learn more about this sport her son is enjoying.

Gritty screen shot from a video from
yesterday.

The joy just kept coming with this informal "club meeting". A mum of one of the Senior wrestlers raved on and on to me about how good our son is and how she loves to watch him wrestling, "He's so entertaining!" It was a bit overwhelming and certainly something a man wouldn't do, but was wonderful for my happy mother's soul! 

Yesterday he had three bouts and won them all, two pins and one in a "technical fall" which is when the points between two wrestlers is greater than seven points, which ends the match. That means he's had 11 bouts so far this season and won 9 of them, 8 of them by pins. That is way beyond what I expected for this, his first high school season. We expected the level of wrestling would go up, and it has, but he's matching it fairly well. It does help to remember that most of the time he's not wrestling the top wrestler from a school, but rather the second or third best a school has in his weight category, because he happens to be in the same weight category as our school's best wrestler. But still, we're not unhappy. It's been a good "apprenticeship" year, a year to ease into high school wrestling, getting more experience, without being devastated by vastly superior wrestlers.

Yesterday's meet was a complicated one. All six international schools in the league were there, but they didn't all wrestle each other, it was a collection of nine duals, each school only faced off against three other schools. A dual is where one school wrestles against another. The dual concept is pretty simple, really, they run through the weight classes, with the representative from each school wrestling their opposite number. Our son's bouts weren't a part of that, they were extras tacked on the end to give the wrestlers who aren't the best in their weight class at their school a chance to "have a go".

Here's a list of the schools we wrestle against (and most of the other inter school activities happen with these schools too, as well as a girl's schools and some other international schools like Yokohama International):

American School in Japan (ASIJ)
St Mary's (Catholic boy's school)
Yokoda High School (US Airforce base school)
Nile C Kinnick High School (US Navy base school)
Zama High School (US Army base school)

In wrestling this year, St Mary's and Kinnick are the best schools, and it was very exciting to watch them dual yesterday. The St Mary's coach is usually very mild mannered and calm, but yesterday he was yelling and jumping and quite dynamic! And we had front-row seats: it was directly in front of where we happened to be seated. Lots of fun!

But you know, I could go and on. But I think it is probably time to call it quits. After all this isn't a meeting of the Wrestling Mum's Club!

A child's birthday: time to reflect and look ahead . . . and eat cake.

Today my middle son turns nine. We're back to a nice set of numbers for ages for the next six months: 6, 9 and 12! Nice and easy to remember.

It is probably only mothers that think about what a birthday started out as – a birth! This particular birth took place in a Japanese hospital. My stay in the hospital lasted about 20 days and qualified as a full-on immersion experience. I got to experience traditional Japanese pillows (filled with beans), Japanese food (including tentacles), compulsory IV drips, post-birth Japanese underwear (don't ask), and a Caesarean section without adequate pain medication following it. I discovered that kimonos don't fit all that well over a pregnant tummy. The compulsory pyjamas were wrap-around style. Even the L size didn't fit me all that well during my just-in-case 10 inpatient days before he was born (I had a mild blood condition they were watching). It just made it round my girth, but was too long and gaped at the cross-over.

And there are many more things I could tell you, even nine years later, but I won't bore you.

There were many challenging things about those days, so many that I prayed fervently that God would allow us to have our third child in Australia, a prayer he graciously answered during our home assignment 2 1/2 years later.

But on a day like today it is better to focus on the young man who is growing up under my care. His early years were fraught with much frustration and clashing of heads. As we understand him more and as he grows and learns self-control, we're getting along better much of the time. This is very satisfying. I'm looking forward to seeing this determined, intelligent young man as he discovers himself more and more and finds out what God is preparing him for.


But for today, we're enjoying him exploring his presents and look forward to a family party this evening, with lots of goodies, and a nice cake.

This week so far has been most unexpected

This week was never going to be an ordinary week. 

Thursday and Friday are the American Thanksgiving holidays. To add to that, Monday to Wednesday were parent-teacher-student conferences. So the teachers aren't working till 9pm every night, the students had Monday and Tuesday afternoons off and all day Wednesday. The Tuesday was a public holiday (and the hairdresser's holiday), which had little bearing on us except that I couldn't go to the gym or get my hair cut. The younger two were scheduled to have a make-up swimming lesson, however, to compensate for the lesson they missed while the swim school moved to its new pool across the street from our house.

The landscape of the week changed not long after I turned the light out on Sunday night. My husband heard a bang, then a splash and a cough. What do you think? Yes, someone jumping down from a top bunk and rushing to the toilet to deposit his tea (dinner) in it. That was when I knew that at least the next day would be different to what was planned. 

Half-way through that night another son made that awful trip to the toilet and acquired a bucket to sleep with. So on Monday I took our youngest to school and hurried home to the other two. Half-way through the morning I made a rushed trip on my bike, in the rain, to get some lemonade. And then at lunch-time to fetch the other son back from school. Then spent all afternoon exhorting our middle son to drink. He wasn't so much in danger of gastro, as of dehydration. They were both dizzy and required instruction on how to get up and walk when you are dizzy. I never realised parenting would require me to teach that!

We went to bed that night not knowing what the next day would hold. 

Tuesday morning our middle son bounced into the room proclaiming he was well. Quite an amazing recovery.The last I'd seen of him, he was flushed, slightly disorientated and moaning frequently. Anyway, both he and his big brother made it to school along with their little brother and I had a couple of hours free. I dashed off to the shop to do some errands before they all descended on me again at 12. I had hardly found the first thing on my list when my phone rang. Yes, the youngest boy was in the Health Centre with a stomach ache. So, he came home and half an hour later threw up all over the dining room. Joy! I spent the afternoon exhorting him not to drink too much. But no, while cleaning his teeth before bed he threw up a large amount of lemonade.

Today I'd anticipated having all the boys home all day, with one exception, we'd scheduled parent-teacher-student conferences mid-morning with someone to keep an eye on them when their presence wasn't required. We'd organised it so that my teacher-husband could make part of each conference. But even that plan went awry. When the alarm went off this morning my husband informed he he'd been up with the bug a good portion of the night (I knew nothing about it). He wouldn't be going to work, so I turned the alarm off and rolled over. A couple of hours later when I finally wandered downstairs to see about breakfast, I found he and our 5 y.o. curled up in the "sick room", otherwise known as the lounge room.

So, I went to parent-teacher-student conferences without my husband and with only two students. Thankfully David was ambulatory enough to look after our youngest while I was gone. Tonight we were to have a guest for tea (dinner), but we've cancelled on that. No good being friendly and sharing our bug for them to take away for the long-weekend.

As the tally stands now, I am the only one who hasn't lain prostrate in the "sick room". I'm not booking a place either.

I'm also hoping that I won't have to make any more last minute mental adjustments to the rest of the week. Being a mum is so much about being flexible. I've come to realise that even though they are all at school, I am the family's release valve. The part of the family whose role is most flexible. And to keep our family functioning I also need to remain so.

Keep at it, Mums

This morning I read a post entitled The Importance of Listening to Mom. It's written by an Occupational Therapist who's seen some accidents that could have been avoided if the kids had just taken their mum's advice. I feel encouraged to keep warning those kids, particularly boys who reason "It's never happened to me therefore it won't!"

More peculiarities of Japanese kindergartens Part 2

If you were already exhausted, you haven't stayed the course. There's more to being a mum in a Japanese kindergarten.

7. Class meetings. These are meetings between all the mums of one class and the teacher. They happen about two or three times a year. No children are present and everyone sits around on kindy-sized chairs. Announcements are made. At the first meeting of the year everyone introduces themselves. At the last meeting of the year everyone offers some kind of thanks and memory of the year.

 8. “Volunteering” takes on a new meaning in Japan. At our kindergarten it was compulsory to volunteer for one task in the year. It was a big deal to figure it all out too. At the first class meeting of the year each class had a list of jobs required by that class to do during the year (matched to the number of mums in the class). They ranged from set-up at the sports day to childcare during graduation or announcer at the sports day.

9. Class representatives. Each class had two representatives to the PTA (or Mothers Association, as it is called). These class reps met regularly together and were responsible for organising various class events for the mums during the year. This included a variety of ‘friendship’ meals and pub outings. They also coordinated things like end-of-year gifts for the teacher from the families, end-of-year parties and class contributions to the PTA fete. A big job. This class representative system also continues through into primary school.

 10. Lunches. Japanese school lunches have become an art form. Some mums get very anxious about them. No basic sandwiches. This has become an artistic event, in some cases. You can see some examples at this website. I personally didn’t enter into this and just gave our son basic lunches. Sandwiches and salad during the summer. In our son’s second winter, he suddenly decided he wanted Japanese-style lunches. Especially because they got them warmed up during winter. I had to learn a little bit about Japanese-style lunches at this point, but didn’t get carried away. Some kindergartens provide lunch and this is a big deal in deciding what kindergarten to send your child to.

 11. Times. Our kindergarten (and most, it seems) runs on a 4 ½ day system. All days except Wednesday are 9 till 2.20. Wednesday finishes at 11.50. This is another thing which varied. For the first month all days are half days (April is a long month). Also for a couple of days before any holiday break, the days are half days (no one has been able to tell my why). During two weeks in February they had parent-teacher interviews in the afternoons. This whole fortnight was half-days.

 I have four more points still to come! However I don't like reading long posts myself so I'll keep them back until tomorrow. You might be wondering why we bothered to do all this. We could have found a less 'involved' kindy. There IS a reason behind sticking with it, though. I'll tell ya later alligator.