Why I Cry in Front of My Child

As parents, we often feel the need to come across as the strong protector. The one that can chase away the things that hurt. We put on the band-aids, we comfort, we give advice, and we tell our kids that it’s perfectly normal to be sad, and to cry.

But for some reason, no matter how much we talk about how natural and okay it is, we often feel like we’re in some way failing as a parent if we break down in front of our kids. Not saying that this applies to everyone, but it sure did to me, and to a lot of other parents that I’ve talked to over the years.

I grew up with a mom that I never saw crying. To this day, I still haven’t seen her cry a single time. She probably has her own reasons for that (I’ve never asked), and luckily for me, it didn’t make me afraid of showing those kinds of emotions. But the other thing my mom never did in front of me, was to argue with her husband. I never saw them have a serious discussion even, at least not that I can recall. And as I came into adulthood myself, I was terrified of confrontations when it came to close relationships. Do I blame this entirely on my mom? Absolutely not! Do I think that her actions could play a role in me getting so uncomfortable around people who argue, and confrontations? Yes, I do.

I understand that we choose to not show all the hardships and troubles we experience as adults to our kids. Poor things, they might end up scared silly and wonder what the hell we are all doing. I sure do sometimes!

But I don’t think we are doing them any favors by not showing the real emotions that we all go through. In a little over a year, my son will be a teenager, and I remember very well how hard that time of life can be. I hope that he’s learned that there’s no shame in feeling the struggle of life at times and that expressing his feelings is perfectly fine.

My son has seen me cry out of heartache, troubled friendships, work-related issues, and movies. Whenever he asks me why I’m crying, I try to be as open and honest about how I feel as I can. The answer I give him will most likely not cover all the details of the events that lead up to me shedding some tears, but I try to give him a very honest explanation as to the emotions I’m feeling. It’s damn hard at times, but I’m very grateful for having done so, as I can now see that he’s more and more comfortable when it comes to opening up if he’s having a hard time.

I probably won’t be the person he will go to with all his problems and struggles, but I can only hope that he will feel comfortable enough to share some of them with me.

I am a human. A person who makes mistakes, who gets moved, who regrets, thinks, wonders, and feel insecure. None of us are perfect, and isn’t it then only right that we show our kids exactly that? That we talk about the things that we find hard and the emotions that come with them?

I sure think so, and that is why I cry in front of my child❤️

The Blind Leading the Blind

To be the mom of a soon-to-be teenager is a bit scary. I remember very well how difficult a time that can be. The hormones, the changes, the challenges. Just being comfortable in your own body that seems like a strangers vessel is challenging enough on its own.

And then you have the introduction to love, in some way or another. It could be a crush on someone, a relationship, or a friendship that evolves into something new and unfamiliar.

I find myself in the position now where I will be giving advice and hopefully help guide my son through some of the challenging bits of growing into an adult male.

The part I find the hardest, is giving advice on love. I would love to be able to tell my son that it gets easier as you get older, but the truth is that it doesn’t.

You learn as you go, and you find ways to cope with the darker sides of love, but it never really gets any easier. To be brokenhearted can be just as devastating when you’re 78, 45, 31 or 11 because the feelings you have at that moment is so raw and unfiltered. They flood you and take you by surprise no matter how much you ever might’ve thought that you were prepared for it.

As his mom, I will try my very best to be there whenever I can. To help him get through the rocky parts. Help him to see through the darkness that might come. I hope I get to be there for plenty of bright and good parts as well.

No matter how blind I may feel, and how difficult love is even at the age I am at now, at least I have a lot of experience. I’ve experienced the pain and the confusion, but also the joy and the magic.

I guess it’s unrealistic to expect of ourselves as parents to be able to give solutions to the problems that are far too complex to ever have a definitive right or wrong solution to it. Love is messy and weird, and in the end, the best thing for us all is probably to just work on communicating more. We need to talk about the things we experience and help each other.

We might all be blind leading the blind when it comes to love, so how about we stop leading, we sit down and we start talking and listening instead.

My dear son, I can’t promise you that I’ll always be able to fix your problems, but as long as I’m here you can always come to me, and I will listen. I will share what I know and what I’ve experienced, and then it’s up to you to choose what you want to do with that information, move onward, and then get your own experiences❤️

It’s a tricky ride, but it’s also a wonderful one. It is one that we all fear and love all at the same time. Blindly we are all in this together ❤️

He cried and I was so proud!

About a week ago, I was working on editing a video for YouTube while my nine year old son was watching videos on his laptop. After a little while I noticed that he was watching something that apparently had his undivided attention, and I got curious. I asked him what he was watching. He told me he was watching a documentary on NRK Super (a web/tv channel for kids) about a boy that was bullied.

Some minutes passed and I could hear the story that this boy told in the background while I was working. It was heartbreaking to hear the cruelty that was done to him by his classmates. They had locked him inside of a classroom, and they’d beaten him up pretty bad. He was talking about how it all happened, how it felt afterwards, and how they eventually had to move and start a new life somewhere else because the bullying wouldn’t stop.

Being a victim of bullying as a teenager myself, I always find it hard to listen to stories like this. The cruelty of kids that don’t think their actions through makes my heart ache. I turned to Leander and saw that he was crying, and it warmed my aching heart.

How lucky am I to have a child that feels such empathy. To be able to watch someone else bare their struggles and pain, and through what he saw, he could feel it all. He could feel it so much that he couldn’t hold it in. It was beautiful to see an emotion so pure, brought forth by information that he himself had gone searching for.

It’s easy as a parent to focus on all of the things that we feel like we have done wrong, or could have done differently. But watching him have this kind of reaction, and talking about bullying with him afterwards, hearing his thoughts, that was a moment where I truly felt that I had done something right. Somewhere along the road, growing up to be the little man that he is, he’s learned to care for others. To love them for who they are and the life they choose live, even though he might not agree with all of it. He’s learned to respect others and to try not to judge them.

I will not take complete credit for this, but the amount of time we’ve used to talk about life, people and choices, I know that’s played an important part in this.

I’m so grateful that my son already is a seeker of knowledge, and I’ll keep on encouraging him. To try to give him as many tools as possible for him to be able to make the choices that will be right for him.

And maybe most importantly, it’s important for me that he knows that crying is not a sign of weakness. To be comfortable enough to show your emotions is a strength that should not be taken for granted. It’s a superpower!

 

I was thinking about growing up…

Last week my son turned eight years old! EIGHT! In danger of sounding like an utter cliché: Where did time go? 

I remember it like it was yesterday that he was just a little baby without words to express himself. But now he’s rapidly growing into someone that I get to know a little more everyday. 

I catch myself thinking back to when I was eight, trying to remember my biggest worries and joys. Some are easy and others not. As I get older it seems that a lot of my childhood memories get smooshed into one and it’s hard to pinpoint exactly which memories are from what age. 

So what did I really know when I was eight? 

I knew I wanted to be a writer, and I think I already was one. I made tiny books out of coloured paper and I wrote stories and gave them to people I loved. I still write and I still love it just as much! 

I knew that I wanted to be like the grown ups, because everything seemed so easy and accessible to them. I was wrong. Now I find myself wishing I could be that kid again. Knowing how complicated it really is to live a grown up life. To climb those trees and believe fairy tales. 

I knew that by the time I would turn twenty-five I would have found Mr. Right, be married and maybe think about starting a family. I was so wrong! Things rarely go according to plan. We all learn that the hard way. 

I knew that I loved books! That love has grown and grown and grown into something so big that I find it hard to put it into words. 

So I guess I knew some things, but I was obviously clueless and naive about others, but I think that’s sort of the beauty of growing up. Finding those things that expands and take roots inside of us. Those little seeds that are inside of us as children that actually starts to grow and refuses to leave. The branches that guides us to a place that we need to be. On a journey we need to go.

But along that journey, some branches die. Some seeds never sprouts, but maybe there’s a reason for that. It might hurt (like hell) but we learn from the pain as well if we refuse to let it defeat us. 

So now I watch my little boy whenever he’s caught up in his own thoughts and I wonder just where he travels. If some of his thoughts and adventures will be the same as mine. If some of my dreams and hopes will be shared with him. 

I wonder what he knows. Sometimes I ask him, but I think he likes to keep some of it to himself just like I did. 

I hope he dreams big and even bigger than big. I hope he reaches for them. I hope his inner tree of dreams grows so big that it almost doesn’t fit him, and that he climbs it all the way to the top and sees the world differently. 

I hope he grabs hold of a good branch whenever another one dies and breaks off. And if he do falls down I hope that he climbs right back up again and sees it as nothing else than a little setback. 

I hope that his life is filled with journeys that he will never forget.

But most of all I hope to be a part of it. If not by being there, then I hope he’ll want to share them with me. Tell me the stories of his life. The joys and the sorrows. I will never know all the answers to all of his questions, but I will always try to help. I will tell him about my climb up my tree, not for the purpose of telling him which branch to go to next. He’ll have to make those decisions for himself, but maybe my stories can help him to see the warning signs of a bad branch from time to time. 

Oh!! For Heaven’s Sake!

Here’s me lashing out!

I went to Disney on Ice today with my son and my boyfriend and it was lovely! The show was amazing!

But one thing wasn’t. The kid on the row behind us who kept kicking in the back of our seats! I could hear the soft voice of the kids mother telling her to stop, but what do you know?? The earthquake in our backs kept coming.

What is it about some parents that thinks that they don’t have the time or need to discipline their children? This was of course a very small case that I encountered today, but in my years working in retail and cafes I’ve seen some of the absolute worst.

It’s easy to let oneself get angry at the disobedient kid, but it’s not really their fault. Sure, some of them are brats and act like our worst nightmares, but it’s not their fault that they’ve become like that. Somewhere along the road of growing up their parents forgot to take the exits to some of the essential moments of their upbringing. I’m not “let’s spank our kids”-old school at all, but I think that some discipline has to be in order for the kids to grow up to be reasonable and social grownups. Kids need boundaries! If they don’t have that of course they will run you over and do whatever pleases them.

I thought the amount of reality shows like Supernanny and The World’s Strictest Parents had taught us that by now, but I guess I was wrong!

I fully understand that kids with no boundaries thinks that it’s their right do whatever, whenever and however. They honestly doesn’t know any better at a young age if no one has taken the responsibility to teach them otherwise.

I’m not saying I’m a perfect parent, because no one is. But I do my best to teach my son good morals and to be polite.

He can be sassy from time to time, like any other, but he knows that there’s nothing to gain by being rude and mean.  I know that this cute little guy I now have living at home some day will move out and go out and try to make it in this world. I want him to it the right way. To work for what he wants and to be nice to the people he meets along the way of his life.

I try to discipline my son in the right way and I wish that I didn’t daily see other kids that made me wish that their parents would have just put in a minimal effort of parenting.

Discipline your kids so that they have a good start at becoming good people! And don’t blame it on the games and the movies cause you’re the boss of those as well!!

There.. I’ve lashed out enough and I’ve gotten it out of my system for now.

The truth is that I’ve had a wonderful Sunday and I wish you all the same in spite of this some what irritated Sunday night blog post 😛

Have a good night!