So I’ve got a confession to make and I know it’s one that some people will either not believe or hate me for but here goes…
I don’t find parenting particularly hard and I genuinely love it *most* of the time.
And wait for this one..
One of my most favourite things to do is sit down and craft with the kids. If it was a choice between that or going out to a cocktail bar for drinks then I would choose it every time.
It’s never really been something I’ve wanted to shout about because firstly I don’t want to make those who struggle feel bad and secondly I’ve not really found there to be much point, until now.
With the huge rise and success of ‘honest’ style parenting blogs it’s almost become a fashion to shout out about how tedious looking after young children is, how horrendous the first few months with a newborn are and how being a parent means you can never enjoy a holiday or meal out again.
I can see how some of these blog posts can be beneficial to mums who aren’t enjoying it, and don’t get me wrong I love to laugh at some of them too. It’s always nice to know you’re not alone but I’ve noticed that a lot of these posts are never able to just talk about the fact they feel that way, they always seem to make assumptions that everyone feels like it and those who don’t are either lying or choosing to hide a huge part of their lives.
It really winds me up.
We are all different.
Some women feel like they have found their calling by focusing on their career, some women feel like they have found it by being a housewife and others, like me, feel like they have found it with a mixture of both. Being a mum is something I had always wanted to be and it did live up to my expectations, in fact it was even better. From the very first moment Cherry was placed in my arms I felt like I had found what it was that was missing in my life and that feeling never went away.
It’s not to say I’ve never had hard times but they have ALWAYS been about me, my struggle with not having enough sleep, my stupid idea for taking tired kids into a supermarket before teatime, my pre-menstrual tension making me snappy and unable to handle little people asking me to do things for them every five seconds.
If my kids are playing up then there is always a reason, either something has upset them or something is going on with me. If I’m pre-occupied with some work that needs doing then they know that and it affects how they behave.
At the end of the day if you went to the dentist and you could tell they didn’t want to be there plus they kept snapping at you then you would probably feel pretty awkward about sitting in that seat. You might feel angry, upset or defensive. Feelings which kids quite frequently show. Kids are so receptive to the emotions of people around them, more so than we ever give them credit for.
And before you all hate me for being smug, I just want to point out that I haven’t always known this. There were some really hard times in the first few months of looking after two children and I wish I could go back and do it all again because I know what I would do differently.
It all comes down to positivity. My friend Fritha wrote a brilliant blog post about it here and she covers it really well so I won’t go into it too much but choosing happy will have a positive effect on other areas of your life. From my own experience it has reduced the amount of tantrums that my kids have and changed the way they behave to the point where things like that don’t happen that often and for that reason I’m not going to share photos of those moments because they don’t sum up what being a parent is about to me.
It hasn’t been an easy journey, I wrote about my experience with anxiety the other day and for a long while I had been in a habit of being scared to think positively because of the worry it would make bad things happen. It took a lot to turn that around but I’m so pleased that I managed to because it has changed my life.
I know there will be people who read this and disagree with me, or feel like there are reasons why they can’t take this approach or be positive in the situations they are dealing with most of the time and I understand that. I can only write about my own life and experiences and I can promise you it’s not all been plain sailing.
I just wanted to speak up on behalf of the mums who mainly share photos of the crafts they do with their kids or who have never posted a photo of a tantrum.
‘Honest’ parenting doesn’t have a universal meaning, it’s about sharing YOUR thoughts on what it’s like to be a mum.
It’s great to be honest but don’t assume that because someone else’s honest is different to yours they are either liars / superhuman or a (insert some kind of swear word).
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