I ♥ Me - Week 3

This week's question by the lovely Notes is:

What Mummy/Parenting behaviours ignores your me, making you want to laugh, scream or cry?

You know what it's like, I'm sure - as a surly teenager pretty much everything your parents do is "Unfair" - the things they make you do, or don't let you do, are done purely out of spite. Their sole purpose and aim in life is to make your life a misery, right?

As you grow older, maybe you mellow somewhat - come to realise that they had some good intentions behind what you considered to be their totally unreasonable expectations. However, there are still some things that you vow you will "never do when you have your own children". After a while, maybe you are lucky enough to become a parent yourself. You tell yourself you won't stress about what they do or don't eat... you won't get overprotective and react like a frightened mother hen when they step near the precipice.... you won't...oh... wait...

Because that's the thing about parenting - a certain amount of it is learned behaviours. Maybe you did decide to become a strict disciplinarian in rebellion against your parents' hippy, laissez-faire attitudes... maybe you buy televisions for every room in the house because your parents did not let you watch ITV as a child...or maybe you just have a strange aversion to wax crayons. However, deep down, I bet you still sing the lullabys your mother sang you, insist your child wears a vest if it falls below 18 degrees C, or holiday in caravans - because it's what you learnt as a child.

Occasionally it makes me scream at myself in frustration when I hear myself uttering the phrases - "hold my hand, this is a busy road", "are you going to finish that", or "do I have to say everything three times?!", and I think "I sound just like my mother".

Then I laugh, and think "Yeah, I probably do...and it's not actually that bad..."

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