One thing I learned from when I was raised is to put your kids first: their needs, their birthdays, their Christmas, their tears, their hurt, their struggles, their pain, their disappointment, their successes, their needs, their lives are here because WE brought THEM into this world.
When kids are your priority, they learn they are valued in your eyes. They begin to understand their worth. When they get your leftover energy, leftover mood, leftover anything, it sets them up to feel like getting leftovers is all they are worth. Instead, when they know they are your priority, they begin to recognize their own worth.
How many of us grew up feeling less than valued by our parents? Put aside because they were too busy with their own emotional baggage, too busy dating, too busy to talk, too busy to listen, always too busy with something?
How many of us had to find our worth in other people instead? How many of us allowed ourselves to be defined by someone else? How many of us have been trampled by the wrong people who didn’t know our worth because we didn’t know it ourselves? Because we never knew what that looked like?
Your children learn to recognize their worth through the time you spend talking with them, not AT them, through the time you spend listening to them, and through every time you put them first instead of handing them your leftover time and energy.
They will grow to understand that other people need to value them and will learn to recognize when someone is giving them leftovers and not their first. I wish I had learned that growing up! It would have saved me a lot of pain, mistakes and distress giving my all to people who gave me leftovers.
But wait Adriana, what about us parents and our needs?
Listen, we are grown ass people, we always find a way to serve, fulfill and satisfy our own needs don’t we? Kids didn’t choose to be here, remember that. When we allowed kids to come into our lives, WE are no longer #1.
Be Beautifully Broken 
Leave a Reply