I truly believe that childhood should be a time of
innocence, joy, playfulness, happiness, and lots of love.
Children do not deserve to go through our nervous breakdown
with us.
Life happens, Bad things happen and we feel bad, sad,
depressed…etc…
We should not take it out emotionally on our children. Let
me explain:
Children are
sensitive to us.
This equates all the way up for different ages. We are all
sensitive to our parents. Examples:
In the manuals for toddlers for Nursery…usually if the
parent drops off the child and has a giant guilt trip and feels really worried
that the child will like it…then the child senses their parents fear and cries.
If you want your child to truly love nursery then drop them off excited for
them and leave...then have your worry or guilt trip out in the hall. You will save them a
lot of grief.
This is also why I always bought myself a Christmas Present
to open every year in front of the kids just in case I didn’t get one so I
wouldn’t ruin Christmas for them. (I always got one and never put it under the tree...but it was just in case I needed to pull it out) I didn’t want them to feel bad that I didn’t
get something and was excited also. I was truly excited for them to open their
gifts every year…I could care less if I got a gift. The Savior's love plus Their joy WAS my gift….but
they were sensitive to me and I wanted to make sure they were truly joyful
without doubt or worry about how I felt during this glorious season.
An example of how we experience
or view things as a child vs things as an adult:
When I was a child my mom and dad left me at my aunt and
uncles to be raised for my own health.
My aunt is a very giving person and she
gave them fruit from her garden that had been bottled. Those bottles took up
the place in the car where I had been sitting. The child in my mind equated
that to thinking that I had been traded for bottled fruit. After that time, I hated
eating bottled fruit. It would physically make me sick for years and years
until my adult mind figured out why. Our child like minds perceive differently and personally.
So if we are going through a difficult time emotionally (someone hurts our
feelings, death, divorce etc….) and when we are depressed, lifeless and without
emotion when we are around our children…they can equate that in all sorts of
child mind ways; perhaps that we don’t love them, perhaps that we don’t think
they are fun to be around, perhaps that we think they are too dumb to enjoy our
company….etc… it almost always hurts
them in some way.
So, when we experience a hard time….We need to shake it off
and enjoy our children while they are children and ‘to infinity and beyond’ as
Buzz Lightyear would say.
My mother was a
wonderful example of that:
My dad was a cool and smart man when he was sober…..but….When
I was little my dad would drink alcohol and come home and beat mom and the kids. The emotion
was scary and intense…but after he would leave, my mom would assess the damage
and if there were no broken bones..etc…then she would excitedly say, “Let’s
change the mood in this home!” and she would honky tonk the piano and we would
all dance around in joy and delight. What a wonderful woman she was.
That proved to me that Happiness is a Choice. So choose to be happy for Kids Sake.
