Wife and MUM 2/2011

Thursday 27 january 2011

This is posting 2/2011 on my appreciation for my wife of 35 years. I am generally fascinated and occasionally frustrated by her. What makes a wife fantastic? 

1.  She is a thrifty lady. Thrifty means she spends what needs to be spent and save what needs to be saved. (Posting 1/2011)

My wife was elevated to the status of a grandma when she was blessed with a grandson two weeks back. With status come sacrifices and responsibilities. I must say she responded to both these requirements with flair and seriousness.

Months before the birth of her grandson she was pounding the shelves of departmental stores for milk bottles, strollers, cloth for wrapping the baby, rubber mats and those thousand and one things only potential grandma can think off.  Also there was continuous search for those food and drinks necessary to get her precious daughter back to health and shape after the birth. I have lost count of the many hours she spent in bookstores searching for the recipes and buying the cookbooks that caters to “Food / Health for Confinement”. And the continuous search for stores that sells the best ginger for the best price.   

As a grandma she frets over her grandson ensuring he is being washed and fed often and well. And off course, in the process she had the texture of her hands transformed from smooth to wrinkled and chapped. Thanks that there are now pharmacy stores that sells cream to counter chapped and dry hands. Her eye bags seem to have changed to a darker shade too. The say beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and she looks great with dark eye bags. I wonder how many hours of sleep she puts in a day. But then after each bath session with Benjamin (that’s the name of her grandson), she would narrate hilariously how Benjamin would piss on her and spill her dress just when she had him all cleaned up. And the grandma just cannot fathom how a child of a week can shoot like a water pistol to a distance of two feet – or it could well be the creative imagination of a new grandma. Anyway, Benjamin is her grandson and all grandmothers think their grandson is the best. Cheers to grandmothers.

As an educator, a trainer, a life coach, an executive coach and someone who is very interested in the personal development of an individual, I am constantly fascinated with how people learn and develop. I often ask my course participants whether humans are a result of nature (what they are born with) or nurture (how they are brought up and what life experiences they weather). In this case my wife (Irene) believes in the philosophy expounded by Watson the behaviorist psychologist who said “give me a child from birth and I can made him into a pauper or a prince” even though Irene does not know who is Watson or the differences between a psychologist and a behaviorist.

When Benjamin was slightly more than a week old, Irene had started to toilet train him. Humm. My wife is a natural psychologist. As a Christian, she epitomizes what proverbs 22:6 advocates “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” She has a daughter as proof that her ways of bringing up a child works. This is where her daughter could and must learn from her. But then again, coming back to the debate of nature versus nurture, her daughter could well be endowed with the natural ability of bring up a child in the way he should go. Only time can tell. As explained in proverbs 17:6, “Grandchildren are the crown of the aged, and the glory of children is their fathers (and mothers).”

No 2 attribute of a great wife: unconditioned love

No 3 attribute of a great wife: A teacher and coach who nurtures a child in the way she wants him to be in accordance with her values and beliefs. (For Irene it is the teachings as enshrined in the Bible.)
 
Cheers.
See you next week.

Papa Coaching

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