INDONESIA: Helping Your Child Through Difficult Times

INDONESIA: Helping Your Child Through Difficult Times

The news hit me hard.

“Where do we go from here?”

“How can I explain it to him?”

“How will he cope?”

“How am I going to help him through this?”

All the above has been clouding my mind for the past couple of months. I tried to shut it down by keeping my already busy self even busier. Burying myself deeper with work, refusing to deal with the reality.

Motherhood didn’t prepare me for this!

At least it hasn’t yet…

My heart would lament at the sad truth.

Some nights the little voice inside me would whisper “What if he doesn’t survive?” Those little voices often times grow bigger and louder and leave me paralyzed at the thought of how Ican help my son through the worse possible scenario.

The unknown can be a truly terrible thing and I am searching high and low for comfort or faith in how everything will turn out for us. For my son and I. We will get through this, no matter what!

Some nights my heart breaks into a million little pieces seeing my son’s face as he sleeps peacefully. Tears running down my face like there’s no tomorrow.

“How do we protect our children from heartache?”

“God, please help me!”

It is almost a natural instinct for mothers to protect their children, right? Yet life will bring us heartache, disappointments and pain. So how can I help and guide my son to manage all of those possibilities?

Then it dawned on me, I cannot forever protect him with a bubble wrap. I cannot shield him from bad news. The world is not always rainbow and sunshine. There will be bad days but hope is always there. Hope is what will get us through the not so good days.

Protecting Your ChildMy son, my precious child may need to learn more about heartache sooner than his peers. He has overcome the facts that his parents are divorced. He has learned to distinguish that a family unit does not always consists of Mommy and Daddy. He now understands that he has two homes filled with people that love him.

As much as I wish to shield him from sadness, I realize I can’t prevent the circumstances in our lives.

All I can do is assure him that everyone loves him. Reminding him that I will understand his feelings and validate them. Knowing my child, I know he can ask the most gut wrenching questions at times so I must prepare myself for that. My son needs a lot of encouragement to talk openly about his feelings and it takes great patience until he is ready to be open. Therefore, I will wait for his cue while being understanding and assure him how much he is loved.

How do you help your child going through difficult times?

This is an original article by World Mom Maureen Hitipeuw from Indonesia

Maureen

Founder of Single Moms Indonesia, community leader and builder. Deeply passionate about women empowerment.

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World Voice: Maternal Health isn’t a Luxury! It’s a Necessity!

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I started CleanBirth.org with a mission of improving birth safety for moms in Laos because I am a mom and I wanted to support other mothers.

Being a mother is a challenging role for me.  It isn’t always easy setting aside the “me” and putting my kids first.  But it’s what moms do, right?  Right.

Mothers often go so far as to prioritize kids’ needs at the expense of our own health.  This is a mistake. To ensure good health for themselves and their children, women need competent health care before and after giving birth.

In developed countries, we are in most cases lucky enough to have sufficient practitioners and hospitals.  This is not the case in the developing world.  The WHO finds:

”The risk of a woman in a developing country dying from a maternal-related cause during her lifetime is about 33 times higher compared to a woman living in a developed country. Maternal mortality is a health indicator that shows very wide gaps between rich and poor, urban and rural areas, both between countries and within them.”

Here is the WHO’s advice in a nutshell about what is needed to prevent needless maternal deaths:

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We atCleanBirth.org agree that no woman should die in pregnancy and childbirth.  We are doing our small part by promoting maternal health among poor, rural, minority familiesin Salavan Province, Laos.  We provide moms with safe birthing supplies in a cute pink bag and fund counseling from local nurses, who we train twice annually.

We work to ensure that mothers survive birth.  Please join us by donating $5 which gives a mom and baby a birth kit that prevents infection: www.cleanbirth.org/donate.

What programs do you know of that have been effective in improving maternal health?

Kristyn Zalota, a World Moms Blog contributor from the USA, is a mom of two and also the founder of Cleanbirth.org, a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Working with a local Lao partner, Cleanbirth.org empowers nurses to provide women in their communities with Clean Birth Kits and safe birthing education. To date, Cleanbirth.org has provided 5,000 birth kits and funded training for 250 nurses.

Kristyn Zalota

Kristyn brings her years of experience as an entrepreneur and serial volunteer to CleanBirth.org. She holds a MA, has run small businesses in Russia and the US, and has volunteered in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Uganda on projects related to women’s empowerment. After having children, Kristyn became an advocate for mothers in the US, as a doula and Lamaze educator, and abroad, as the Founder of CleanBirth.org. She is honored to provide nurses in Laos with the supplies, funding and training they need to lower maternal and infant mortality rates in their villages.

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