Attitude and effects

Yesterday the Little Big Fella and I went and did some supermarket shopping to re-stock for the long weekend.  We also stopped in the discount store for a few bits and pieces.

While we were there, another customer happened to have an armful of items and dropped the lot all over the floor.

Know what my Little Big Fella did?  He said, "don't worry, I'll help you pick them up"!  And he did!

In that moment I was super proud of my boy and felt like I'm doing a pretty decent job as his mum.


This weekend our neighbours have family staying over, and the Little Big Fella gets along really well with the kids.  So today he spent the morning playing over there and they spent the afternoon playing over here.

At one point all the kids were here having a splash in our blow-up pool, so their mum came over to help me supervise them all because, according to her, "my children are the spawn of the devil".

I don't really know this woman.  We've met two or three times over the past 6 months, but in that moment I felt my heart break for those children, and that family.

Between that conversation and this post I read this morning over at Single Dad Laughing, I realised that the words we use and the attitudes we have toward our children create who they are!

Surely there are going to be enough people in your child's life to tear them down and make them feel worthless that you don't have to be one of them!

Surely, as their parent, you should be their safe haven and the place they come to for consolation and reassurance that they're okay!

Surely.

I get that kids are wearing.

I get that sometimes you get sick of saying the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and you feel like you may as well smack your head into a brick wall

I get that there are some things about your kids, and as they get older their decisions that you're not going to like.

I get that.

But one of our roles as parents is to love our kids and make sure they know it!  They need to know how proud we are of them, how brilliant they are, how creative and interesting and beautiful.  They need to hear from their parents that, no matter what happens, they are acceptable to us!

And they need to hear it in our conversations with other adults.

We parents are very human.  But let's not allow that to be an excuse to break our children.

Let's keep trying to improve our communication with our kids, find out all the wonderful things about their personalities and views of the world that we can be proud of and inspired by.

Because our children, no matter who they are or what they do, are beautiful and inspiring and deserve to be loved.  They are, after all, human just like us.