Dear Olivér, Milán and Dominik,
You are 5, 2 years and 3 months old (little little baby Domdom) when I am writing this letter to you – all nicely sleeping in your comfy beds in London. I honestly hope that this version won’t tempt you to take the ‘easy’ route and that you will have a go at trying to read your dear old Mother’s ramblings in your MOTHER TONGUE – Hungarian 😀 And no, I am not writing this version to translate it to you, but rather to make the message more widely accessible, especially to your dear Auntie Ale, my most loyal reader and dear friend.
It’s been brewing in my mind for a while, that being a MOB (mother of boys) brings a whole other level of responsibility. I would like to raise you to become strong and self confident human beings, whilst staying open minded and inclusive – leaders if you have the ambition and talent to do so. What is even more important to me than your success and happiness in life (which at some spoint will speed up like hell, you’ll see!) is that you would NEVER EVER judge a person by their gender, ethnicity or religion.
Being a parent is hard at many levels (extremely rewarding as well obviously, but you can see that in all the other posts on this blog), there are numerous challenges of having a newborn, a toddler, a preschooler, a secondary school kid and a univesity student , who is YOUR CHILD. Initially it’s lots of pysical needs, emotionally all you need is love, which is easy to give as I love you all unconditionally. The prenatal period is amazing, we are two living organisms, in perfect symbiosis, my body choses to grow yours and provides for all your needs – you in exchange hold the promise to carry my genes forward. Then you are born and you need to breath, regulate your temperature and feed – albeit the actual food is provided by me to you ❤ Then your physical needs, which must be catered for by me are less and less, but in paralel you need moral and emotional support to judge what is safe and what isn’t, what is right and what isn’t and how to behave/how not to behave.
Domi, you are so little, my little baby >3 . I feed you, you sleep on my chest, snuggle and safe and we spend the best moments of the day together in the bathroom when you are kicking with your tiny legs in the warm water, making a splash, while I sing to you.
Milan, you are instantly comfortable in a strange environment, can make friends without any trouble and greet everyone with a loud HELLO when you arrive or leave. However, you still need me to help when you go to the toilet, come with you to your bed when you are ‘scared because a big fish is coming and Hamm! your bed’ and definitely require my assistance with preparing your salmon with broccoli, albeit you can make your own strawberry milk by pouring Nesquick into the cup…and on the kitchen floor, tabletop, and generally all around where you are sitting.
Oli, you are making your own cereal in the morning 🙂 you can go into the swimming pool all on your own, get changed and join Apa’s swimming class. Even more, you can read a bedtime story for Milan and me! You just passed 5 – this is incredible, just think about it! We often joke with Apa, that we just need to teach you how to do the laundry and you are ready to be called a ‘grown man’ 😀 You just started Year 1 and your social life is on the up! You were always a very popular little boy with lots of friends, since you had very strong empathy skills and could put your friends’ needs ahead of you, these posts showcase that: Me, my friends and I, and ‘Neked adom a csokimat’ (you’ll need to Google Translate this one 😀 ). It came as no surprise to us, that you built an extensive friend circle in school quickly, however, this year something happened that has brought a new definition of friends: you choose those who you like and independently of my relationship with their parents, you just invite them over to ours to play and they come – on their own, as they are, not parental supervision required! Where will I get my new friends from? 😉 And while you had more girls as friends than boys, you made a switch this year and have many more boy friends rather than girls. There are more and more stereotypical boys games you are playing and once the gender of a potential friend is determined, you are looking for traits that makes the candidate similar/likable for you. This is fine, and follows the norm, however, this is where girls/boys separate and our entire society is built on the inequality that results from the different social pressure on you, boys and your classmates, who are girls.
Despite being incredibly lucky to have three healthy, truly special and intellectual little ones (the gender does not matter in this statement!), I still have to face the challenge of having three boys head on. You are destined to succeed, and believe in yourselves, since you are not just boys, but white boys…but I hope that you are not all set to become the middle aged white CEO man everyone dreads?! So I cannot just let you grow up according to the current social norms.
Why? Because they are not right. There is a lot of talk about gender equality, but very little action still. Biologically speaking, women are meant to be the one that nurture others, since we can grow an entire human being in our bodies, then feed them, so running the household, managing the family calendar and organising the playdates are seen as a continuum… So it is meant to be? Your Dad and I do not follow these norms, he spends a lot of time with you during the week, we try to share the chores as equally as we can and he definitely champions the family calendar…Still, the influence of the school remains a dominant input to your thinking, and more specifically, what your friends think of the man/woman relationships in life – even though right now it’s about marrying Pola so she can have a sleepover at ours EVERY day and I make pancakes for breakfast EVERY day as a result 😀 You couldn’t care less about the News programme on the TV – and shouldn’t to be fair, even us don’t dare to watch it much, it is so depressing. However, it is important to be aware of what is going on in the world, so you can form your own opinion on what is right and wrong based on your life experiences and use your vote, signature and social media presence to influence where the world goes. And how many people will you touch this way, chances are, not too many. But what really matters, is how you go on to raise your own kids – beyond how healthly their diet is, whether they do enough exercise, or how well they are dressed up on a windy day. The question is, what sort of example will you set to them, and how we lead them and help them form their own view of the World: what is a GOOD human being like?
Now I am sure that I started to lose your attention. I have already mentioned the main point of the entire post: respect others without any condition apart from how they act and what they say. If you happen to become leaders, then value those who work towards the goals you are trying to achieve – achieve them together! If you witness unfairness, then don’t just walk past it, but STOP and CHALLENGE, and if you can, then do your very best to make it right. I ask you, as your Dear Mother, who loves you more than anything else in the entire world, please live according to the values above and I’ll be super duper proud of you!
Watch this little song, if Youtube still exist, that is 🙂
Lots of love,
Anya
PS: You might have noticed that I used the biggest condolence that us women possess: we are the mothers of all people – and that’s just the reason why I am optimistic that they day will come where we will be truly equal and we won’t need any more #MeToo to have those prosecuted who sexually abused others, independently from what the abused person was wearing, or whether they were under the effect of any psychedelics. Also, there will no longer be a #Paygap – right now at one of the top university in the World, King’s College London, there is a 14% pay difference between men and women at the same skill level! And it will be absolutely ridiculous to think that girls cannot be superheroes, unless they are dressed up in tiny mini skirts and all-showing bras and that they should just aim to become like Barbie or be friends with pink ponies…there is no hashtag for this one, but this is the most relevant example for your current age 😀