Parenting in our Little Village

by Jessica

Every mom knows it takes a village to raise a baby. But since my babies were little, our village has looked a bit different than we thought it would. Noelle was 10 months old the first time I ran into a group of Burmese refugees at a local fall festival. One of the women, Hela, had two little ones and was pregnant with her third. I was just figuring out the whole mom-with-a-baby thing. We connected at a frazzled fall festival chasing after our little ones. A few months later, we threw her a baby shower for her third baby, a son.

My daughter Noelle, at a little over a year old, wore a traditional dress Hela gave her and danced tirelessly to some off-key guitar music at the baby shower.

We never set out to raise our kids this way; it just happened, slowly but surely. It’s certainly not what I expected. But it just seemed so natural–I had a baby, Hela and her friends had babies, and I enjoyed their company. I carried Noelle the first few months, but by the summer after I met Hela, she could walk and point out the apartments of all her friends. She went with me to visit and listen to their stories, and then she went along while we delivered supplies and picking up handwoven bags made by the mothers of her friends. When we started an English class, she and her friends ran around together. Everyone had babies; mine was just one in the mix.

These apartments don’t look like the nice homes where her pre-school friends live. They are nowhere near the suburbs. And to be honest, we’ve been asked a few times if we feel safe taking our kids there. Once, my friend Caren’s baby picked up some used Q-tips off the ground–grossest. thing. ever. Other than that moment, my kids have eaten weird things and been picked up by strange people and we’re all OK with it.

A few years after we first met Hela, all of the refugee families moved to a new apartment and we kind of moved too. Our church and two other churches started renting an apartment as a community center we called the Village Center. This tiny one-bedroom space became the center of our unique village. This practice of parenting is how we show (and not just tell) our kids that making friends with people who don’t look like you is wonderful and worthwhile.

There my kids have made new friends and given them sage advice: This is Joy telling Jas “I big, you little.”

They’ve loved on other people’s squishy-cheeked babies.

They’ve been read to by children who are learning to read in their second (or third or fourth) language.

This picture fills my heart up every time I see it.

This is what joyful parenting looks like to me. Not just staying at home with my kids, but taking them out into the wild and woolly world and engaging with it. Letting them be kissed by old refugee women who cannot stop touching their blond hair, going to corners of our city that are off the beaten path, listening to stories about places that are far away from their home.

I always wonder what impact our little village will have on my kids. A few months ago, I caught a glimpse: Noelle, who is an old soul, was listening in the back of the car while I took our 83-year-old translator home from a Hill Triber artisan meeting. Dr. Salai has lived an extraordinary life: he got a degree in the U.S. in the segregated south of the 1950s, returned for a doctorate in agriculture, helped people all over his country, protested the Burmese junta alone one day, went to jail for years, staged a hunger strike just so he could have his Bible, was released from jail after an Amnesty International campaign, got kicked out of his country, and made it to the States to live with his daughter just a few years ago.

I love Joy’s face in this picture–she sat in Dr. Salai’s lap forever and glared at every other baby that came near. She has a thing for old men.

We were talking in the car on the way home from our meeting about his wife, who is still stuck in Malaysia. They haven’t seen each other since 2008. His goal is to see her again in this life and he’s working tirelessly to get her here. As he caught me up on her health and visa status, Noelle started asking questions in the back: why was she stuck? could she come here tomorrow? will mommy and daddy be stuck apart? why won’t her government let her go?

Dr. Salai explained it perfectly, that he has a grumpy government who won’t share with others and there are lots of people who are working to make sure they are sweet. She got it. She listened. It sunk in.

Later, on the way home, she said, “Mommy, are all the hill tribers here because of their grumpy governments?”

I said yes, and told her we were lucky to live in a place where our government wasn’t grumpy. I tried to explain about democracy and governments, but I’m not sure how much she understood (how does one explain the legal system to a 5-year-old?). It mattered most to her that they couldn’t go home. She thought about it for a long time. I thought she’d forgotten it, till she said, “We should help them.” I asked her how.

She thought for a little bit longer, then said, “We should help them with our love.”

I couldn’t agree more.

This week, Sarah at Emerging Mummy has prompted people to talk about their Practices of Parenting, the things they do to enjoy parenting now. Click on the link above to read other great parenting practices.