You’re doing a fantastic job.

Bringing up children is stressful, with many years worth of feeling unappreciated, disrespected and used as a verbal punching bag. As a parent, your children rely on you for pretty much everything. You slog day and night to provide for them and to make sure they’re well looked after. They are expectant, demanding and quite frankly, massive pains in the arse and they hardly ever say thank-you for the amount that you do for them. But even so, we love our children no matter what.

I’ve seen a couple of posts recently on Twitter of parents questioning their skills as a mum or dad. In response, I felt it necessary to write this blog post and to state that no matter how hard it gets, you’re doing a fantastic job. It is almost inevitable that at some point our children will feel it necessary to use the words ‘I hate you!’ or show disrespect in one way or another. It’s their attempt at hitting you where it hurts in order to get something they want from you. How do I know this? Because when I was a kid, I used to do it myself. I’m not proud of it, but I was young and sometimes (Especially when we’re young) we say things that we do not mean. It’s just a phase and eventually your child will realise that this is wrong and WILL one day appreciate everything you’ve done and are doing for them.

I used to argue with my parents a LOT, but it NEVER meant that I didn’t love them. In fact, we look back on the times we used to argue and laugh at the pathetic-ness of the things we used to argue about. I mean, seriously… they were petty.

As your children grow up, and perhaps even after they have children themselves, they will come to realise the amount you have done for them. The struggles of nappy changing and bottle feeding them as babies, right up to washing their clothes and getting them to school on time as a teenager.

They do appreciate you and everything you do for them. They just may not realise it yet.

I hear my children winge at me for not letting them stay up later, I listen to them answer me back as I tell them to go and clean their rooms and I watch their eyes role to the back of their head when I instruct them to do their homework. Children are difficult, and children will always try and push the boundaries, but I can almost guarantee…

You are appreciated.

You are loved

and

You are doing a fantastic job.

Your children couldn’t live without you.