These are the things they don’t tell you
My children are teenagers now and I have learnt alot in the last two years about communication, relationships, family and freedom. When your children are little you can only think as far ahead as teatime or maybe bedtime (if you are lucky) so you can miss all the little things that you only notice when they are gone.
This is my list of things I have learnt;
- What you do with your children when they are young really defines your relationship. Spend as much time with your children as you can when they are small.
- Children reflect back what they see and feel from us. Your actions create their universe. Be mindful of what you teach
- Spending time with your children and really getting to know them individually will be so beneficial for you in anticipating their emotions, feelings and moods around more complex issues when they get older. Being able to recognise when your son is feeling pulled between groups of friends or when your daughter feels left out means you can hold space for them to work it out.
- Slow it all down and take your time. Have more duvet days, video snuggles, crabbing adventures, bicycle rides. Children know how to have fun. Let them teach you.
- Children take their time for a reason. They are in no rush as they are enjoying the now. If you can sync up with this, I promise you a whole lot of weight will be lifted from your shoulders and you will relax more.
- Cry and laugh more. Get overwhelmed by raw authentic emotion. Grown ups are great at hiding all this and it makes for heavy work guessing what people really want, need and are saying.
- Never worry about tidying up. There will always be mess to tidy. It never goes away and its a fruitless task.
- Don’t think that if you have a great relationship with your children at any one point that it will remain the same. The only thing I can promise you is that it will all change, develop and grow. You have to commit to working on your relationships from both sides.
- Keep going on Mummy dates-this is a great tradition in our house. A whole day with me doing whatever you want. These days are still amazing and now morph into something that both of us like vintage clothes shopping at Camden market rather than soft play (thank goodness!)
- Your children will always be your babies but remember you are a daughter or a son too. If you feel disconnected to your own children, look up at how you are with your own parents. They love you dearly too and they are also doing their best job. Go easy on them like you would want your children to go easy on you.
All of this learning has helped me navigate the last few teenage years and the biggest thing that has helped me is having spent so much time with my children as they were growing up. The magic is in the time. Believe me.
Love Gayle xx