JustPeachy
03-30-2009, 11:52 AM
I loved reading on page 181 the following and I wanted to know if those families with more than one child can relate to her thoughts. If so, in what way?
"Through our experience with the first child -- with his or her personality, eccentricities, inclinations, needs -- we learn to define ourselves as mothers. When our second child is different from the first in every way, we are thrust into a redefinition of ourselves, of motherhood, of our perceptions and choices. I can never unlearn what my first taught me. And yet these hard-won lessons may find little application in the mothering of my second child... I realize, in a cold sweat that often accompanies starkly obvious revelations, that these are two separate people. I must mother them equally and absolutely individually."
"Through our experience with the first child -- with his or her personality, eccentricities, inclinations, needs -- we learn to define ourselves as mothers. When our second child is different from the first in every way, we are thrust into a redefinition of ourselves, of motherhood, of our perceptions and choices. I can never unlearn what my first taught me. And yet these hard-won lessons may find little application in the mothering of my second child... I realize, in a cold sweat that often accompanies starkly obvious revelations, that these are two separate people. I must mother them equally and absolutely individually."