I had a revelation. See, I tend to get frustrated with my oldest daughter Madison, A LOT. More then her twins sisters. Its for no other reason then, I expect more from her, because she is the oldest. And I know that its her age as well (she will be 11 next month), but that's no excuse for what I noticed about myself. I am not expressing how much I do love her. And right now is when I need to the most. Right now is when she needs it the most.
Let me back up and say that I am not the gushy type of person. I don't express my feelings of like or love with words, but more with actions. And I don't even always do that the way people think I should. I have always had an issue with this. But once you get to know me, you learn that I am really not a bitch and if I seem to be one, its completely NOT on purpose.
Well, I think I may have snapped at Madison one too many times yesterday, and she walked away crying. (Knife through my heart, wow.) So I told her I was sorry, and why I did yell at her that time. Then I let it go. (Another thing we don't do in our house is make a big deal out of everything. I feel that if you encourage everything to be a big deal, you are just creating drama queens. And with 4 females to 1 male in the house...no, can't have that.)
I went about my day and it kept popping into my head. And I realized.... I have a good kid on my hands. She really is. Always has been. She is great at school, loves to learn, very willing to help others (outside of our household) .She is very smart, but I can't count on her to just know that I love her. She is going to be hitting her teen years very shortly. Those are the years kids rebel the most. She is good, she won't rebel. Or will she?
I looked at her life, with me as a mom, as she might view it and I didn't like what I realized. I do snap at her a lot. But....she snaps NO at me every time I ask her to do ANYTHING. She butts into EVERYTHING in my adult/household life. She takes her attitude out on her sisters all the time for no reason at all. Again...not acceptable, but its her age. So I snap and yell at her or punish her or reprimand her. OMG, she has plenty of reasons to rebel against me! But most kids rebel because they don't feel loved or that their parents don't understand them. I need to change this NOW before its too late. I don't have long.
That night, I sent all the girls to bed. Once the twins were settled, I went into Madison's room and closed the door. I let know that I don't like to yell at her. And I don't want her to think that I don't love her because I really really do. She got tears in her eyes but would not let herself cry (knife in heart again). So I just grabbed her, held her tight, and I validated for her that I really DO love her.
My point of this is not to announce how I feel like I am a bad mom sometimes, although I do. I am sure a lot of us feel like this sometimes. My point was to remind us all, to just stop sometimes, in the midst of our crazy hectic stressful lives, and try to see how our kids think we feel about them. Verbally tell them that we love them. Because everything we do out of love for our children...they don't always see and realize. Their little child hearts sometimes need to HEAR it.
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