A Child’s Guide to Loving your Parents. Building a Strong, Healthy Foundation as a Family is Essential for a Happy, Balanced Life
Parents, need your Love, Support, Intuition and Guidance in their journey to be the best parents they can be. Showing love and respect in understanding your parents enabling you to treat them well. Parenting is a two-way connection between Adult/Child: Child/Adult with positive and constructive support from Family, Friends, Neighbours and Community. To build a Healthy, Happy & Strong family you need caring, loving, positive people in your lives to bring balance, harmony and guidance for your lifelong journey ahead.
“The Greatest Gift a Parent and Child can Give One Another is a Sense of Pride – In Sharing one another’s Accomplishments, Learning and Growing from any Mistakes!“
It’s important to know that parenting is a all encompassing factor of life, taking up every waking moment of the day and sometimes even the night. Each Parent has their own unique way, set of values and beliefs of how they want to raise their children. For the most part wanting to be the best parents they can be. Wanting to share improved ways of building a happy and purposeful life together.
One of the missed areas to help Build Healthy, Loving & Happy Families is with supporting children with the understanding of how to be loving and supportive to their parents. Children you are people within your own right, for a family to remain connected for a lifetime it will take support from one another, understanding, forgiveness, empathy, communication and commitment with each person working together.
How Do You Show Your Parents How Much You Love Them? Let’s take a walk through with some helpful steps how this can be achieved!
- Concept: Understanding & Foundation: This concept will help you. Understand that you chose your parents and they chose you for the lessons that you are all about to learn. These will unfold over your lifetime. This all happened before you were even born. So your parents aren’t commodities = (something that can be bought, sold: traded in or exchanged for a better model: nor should they be taken for granted.)
However, as I say this I know there are many children whom through no fault of their own do get fostered or adopted because their birth parents for whatever reasons aren’t able to cope or who have passed away. The support that I am sharing with you here can still be applied to your fostered or adopted parents.
- Cut them a little slack: There will be times when your parents are tired and grumpy. They have a lot going on –
- Building a Relationship between the two of them,
- Being there for you,
- Caring for you and teaching you about life
- Providing a home that each of you can enjoy and be happy
- Cleaning the house, Cooking meals, Shopping, Gardening and fixing the house as necessary
- Paying the bills
- Maintaining a job or career to provide the income necessary to feed you, educate you and to provide a quality of life.
- The list goes on and on but I am sure you get the message.
- Ask Questions: if there is something you don’t know or don’t know how to do, then ask. If Mum or Dad seem a little off, angry or upset. It might be nice to ask them, something like this – “Mum/Dad you don’t seem yourself, is everything OK”? Maybe give them a hug. If you don’t feel comfortable to ask questions then you might go and read a book, play on outside, sing your favourite song. Just giving them some space until they are feeling better.
- Listen: It is important to listen to your parents and what they have to say. You may not always agree, but listening is an important part of learning.
- Respect: Respect is an interesting word and one you will hear often in your growing up. The meaning of respect is when you have a deep feeling of love, warmth and happiness toward someone. It maybe that they have treated you nice, they made you feel happy by saying something kind to you, it might be in your parents case having respect for the fact they are working to provide you a good life, feeding you, keeping you safe and warm. However, sometimes respect can just be as simple as being kind to someone because they are doing their best.
- Be Kind: No matter what your situation being kind will make life easier. Being kind also means being kind to yourself and your brothers or sisters as well. Allow your parents to reprimand you if you are doing something that is wrong, that could harmful to yourself or someone else. But if your parents get nasty, by saying things like “you’re dumb” or “you are always doing things wrong”. Allow your parents to know gently but kindly that you don’t like being spoken to like that way and it hurts your feelings.
- Clean up after Yourself & Have Your Bedroom Tidy & Clean giving you a special place to go if you are feeling upset or life isn’t going well.
- Forgiveness: No-one is Perfect: And Life isn’t Perfect: Forgiveness is about understanding that each person including your parents, will say and do things that they don’t mean. There will be very few days where something won’t go wrong or where someone will not cause a level of upset or even annoy you. Find something that makes you feel happy that will distract you. Like learning something from school that you might be finding difficult. If it is a really uncomfortable situation where intense anger is involved then go to your safe place to do something that will take your mind away from what is happening to something that is happy.
- Speak to someone you can Trust: I just want to mention here from as long as I can remember I always believed in God. That might sound crazy, but I did before anyone ever told me anything about God/Higher Power. I talked and prayed to God each and every day like a best friend and still do. Also to help you to feel and think better there are school counsellors you can go to. There is a saying “That a problem shared is a problem halved”. It is not uncommon no matter how good your parents are sometimes there may be things that are easier for you to talk about with someone else.
- Love your Parents: There will be times when you won’t always like your parents for whatever reasons, it is important during these times not to let these feelings overrule your love for them, to understand that you are your own person, you can be how you want to be and who you want to be.
“No Matter whether you have the Best Parents in the World or the Worst Parents” They are your parents and how you choose to learn from them is within you. Sometimes the most challenging parents are the ones you will learn the most from. Always to remember that it is in rising above the challenges in life that will build courage, strength, love and empathy.
If you are an Adult child reading this get to know your parents in your adult years, you may have to put some distance or boundaries in place so you can be feel comfortable
However
I URGE YOU GET TO KNOW YOUR PARENTS! LOOK PAST THEIR FAULTS, LOVE THEM & ENJOY THE PERSON WHO LIES WITHIN, NOT THE PERSON YOU PREVIOUSLY SAW OR REMEMBER!
Additional Resources
Links to Support Articles you can Download
Kids, Parents, Young Adults, Teachers & Teen Helpline
A Parent’s Love Never Dies: Establishing a Positive Relationship with your Adult Children
What an Awesome Day!!! The Day you Realize that Your Parents are Human!
