MOTHER AND CHILD

Sunday was mothering Sunday, and a whole lot of people were sending out messages to their mothers and updating their status on facebook telling everyone how they love their mom and all that. There was this particular tweet someone tweeted on twitter that made me laugh so hard.  It said, “Mothers are so fond of their children because they are very sure they are their own, unlike the fathers who are not so very sure”…..lol.  However that’s a story for another day.  Also, I saw lots of women who not only put up their mother’s pictures on facebook, but also that of the mother  in law as well. I was very impressed with this. I know lots of women these days do not get along with their mother in law . Sometimes there is this rivalry between women and their mother in law which if not properly handled may lead to serious problem within the family. I did experience this in the early years of my marriage.

I happen to be the only child of my mother (Dad had a child from another woman) and I lost dad when I just left secondary school so it was just my mum and I and we were so close. My wife and I started dating in my second year in the university and funny as it may seem, the first time I took my wife home and introduced her to my mother as my girlfriend my mum developed instant likeness for her so much so that they became so close then.  She was like the daughter she never had. They became so close that they were virtually doing everything together….. going to the market together, doing stuffs together and all that. So you can imagine how confused I was, when years later after we got married, my wife and my mom started having issues.  I immediately understood that these issues spun from the fact that my mom felt that I was no longer giving her the attention I use to give her, so she was doing everything to crave that attention. My wife on the other hand was of the opinion that my mum was been too worrisome and she should cut me some slacks, and understand that things are a bit different now.  So I had to call both women separately and explain to them that if they really want my happiness then they need to stop acting up. I was able to arrest the situation and put each woman in her right place. My mum is my mum, while my wife is my wife. They both have different roles they play in my life and the earlier they understand that, the better it would be for all of us.  Right now things have gone back the way it used to be and I’m happy about this. I laugh these days when they both gang up against me, most especially when one of them needs me to do something, they form alliance against me and I grudgingly give in. They now have this mother and child relationship once again, and we are one big happy family again.

The relationship between mothers and their son cannot be over emphasized . There is this close bond between them, most especially when the son happen to be the first child or the last child or the only son or only child. The mothers always fail to realize that her little boy would one day grow up to be a man and would go on and have his own family.

There is this story a colleague  told me about a friend of his whose closeness to his mother has prevented him from getting married. He said that every girlfriend he has had, refused to marry him because of his affinity to his mother. He always made them understand that he cannot live separately from his mother and his mother will live with them under the same roof when they eventually get married. It is not as if he cannot afford to set his mother up somewhere else as he is well loaded and have houses in different places in both Lagos and his hometown, but he is insisting that his mother would live with him. In most cases the girls get scared and refuse to go into the marriage. However, the mother has realized that she seem to be the problem of her son and that their closeness together is what is affecting him and preventing him from getting married and has since relocated abroad. Now it’s not as if the mother cannot live with him as the case may be, but it’s obvious in this case that the kind of bond that mother and son share is so tight that it would definitely put a stress on the marriage when eventually he gets married. The good thing here, however is that the mother has been able to realize this and try to create the enabling environment for her son to move forward. Not all mothers can do this. Please send me your comments and let me know what you think about the relationship between wives and mother in law.