Skills you need as a mother

I don’t know about you and what happens in your house, but in my house we all have different skills sets.  Gerhard is responsible for holidays, booking, paying and actually getting us there.  I pack, clothes for flying holidays, clothes and food and medical supplies for self-drive holidays.  I buy groceries and direct Sekai what to cook when, Gerhard does a mean braai and he makes delicious curry and pasta.  I tend to do most of the shopping in the house, Gerhard has to buy cars.  You catch my drift.

For my sins I seem to be responsible for IT…please note that I do not possess any specific IT skills.  For some reason I just seem less afraid of embracing technology.  As a working mother I don’t have a lot of free time.  Weekends are for shopping (groceries and clothes for the kids mostly).  This past weekend was spent setting up Liam’s Xbox.  The poor kid saved up forever to buy a new Xbox.  Gerhard had to work on Saturday, so the kids and I set off to buy the said Xbox.  We then had to set the thing up. 

Let me tell you this is a far cry from the Nintendo game consoles of my youth where you plugged a cable into the TV, another one into a power outlet and off you go.  Your only concern was when the game, a massive cartridge bigger than an old fashioned tape did not make proper contact with your console and you sort of had to wiggle it a bit!

An Xbox is like a complicated computer.  There were multiple parts to be assembled from the box.  Then the thing needs to be connected to the internet, in our case snail speed internet brought to us courtesy of Telkom.  Let me tell you at a point I felt so sorry for poor Liam sitting there waiting that I ended up connecting the Xbox to my mobile phone.  It took hours!  Liam eventually went to bed without playing a single game on his new Xbox.  Liam and I sat in front of that TV because I had all the passwords in my head, yet Liam is the only one that understands the complicated controller that the Xbox comes with.  So a team effort if I were to be completely fair.

We got there in the end, but I felt like I needed one of Gerhard’s shorter flying holidays and a stiff drink afterwards.  I still have no idea how to play Fortnite, a strange shooter like game where you do a little dance called the Floss after emerging victorious!  I do think every decade of parenting brings its own challenges, but tech and locking down kid accounts and Fortnite is definitely something our own parents did not have to worry about.

So the list of skills that the modern mother needs gets longer and longer every week. Speech writer, taxi driver, nurse, psychologist, shopper, teacher, pet sitter, IT guru, financial advisor, giver of hugs, keeper of secrets,  finder of things, employer of staff to look after kids, chucker of cricket balls in nets when dad’s must work.  To all the mothers, I see you!