What I want my children to know before they have children of their own...
Children will ruin anything in any room. You can't have nice stuff. We tried, your dad and I. We bought nice stuff and tried to teach our children to be careful. But children are UNABLE to be careful.
This morning Athena walked into the laundry to and tripped. As she fell forward she grabbed the washer liquid dispenser drawer, pulling it completely out of the washer. Unfortunately it was filled with bleach ...and the bleach flew all over the floor and the laundry that was laying in a pile on the floor. It did not get on Athena, except her feet when she stood up...because it was all over the floor!
Why did I have so much bleach? Because I was running a load of only bleach to clean out the washer so it would smell nice again.
Now, the laundry which became drenched in bleach was whites and few kitchen towels. Unfortunatley the load still had an hour left to clean. The best I could do was shut off the machine and turn it back on , this time, to a short wash. 15 mins.
The bleach had also spilled on a big garbage bag of clean sheets. Luckily the sheets are to our old bed and don't fit our new bed. So I was saving the sheets as fabric anyway. But the big bag sitting in a pile of bleach made the cleanup worse.
And outside of the laundry we find...carpet. Athena and I were bleach footed in the laundryroom and needed to somehow get to the bathroom to wash it off...without ruining the carpet in the hall.
I took two kitchen towels that were not wet with bleach and laid them one in front of the other on the carpet outside the laundryroom. Athena and I stepped from one to the next and lifted the one from behind us to place it in front of us. We made it to the bathroom. But I was not happy.
This lesson you must learn as a parent:
Children are dangerous in any room! However, we cannot simply ban them from every room.
Even if they are only in a room for 10 seconds they could destroy something.
We cannot avoid every situation. We may not even be able to imagine every possible disastrous scenario. But, we can write about them. And make sure our children know when they are grown how horrible they were. Because all children are horrible even if they don't mean to be. Some however, some children are angels more often and easier than others. I did not get any angel children. lol
But they do try. They try to be good and I love them for it. I love their efforts.
I love their talents. I love their kindness and sweetness. I love their souls.
I thought I knew, before I had children, what being a mother would be like. I had no idea. I had no idea how hard it would be to raise successful, healthy and amazing human beings. And I have hope that all three of mine will be just that. But it is the most challenging thing in the universe! To figure out what is best for each individual child. To figure out how to teach your children in every situation. Life raising children is always changing. They are always moving to a new level of learning and new struggles.
One day you will all be grown and the hard part of my job will be done. I will still guide you and love you and help you. I look forward to then...but I am enjoying the journey there.
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