Parent love

As a parent regardless of size, race, religion and all the things you believe separate us. We love.  I can stare in your eyes and know that we share the same struggles when it comes to our children. I know that love is what we all give to them be it in different ways.

We want the best for our children no matter how that may play out. We struggle or may have different ways of expressing the love we have. Some will judge the wisdom of why I may do things the way I do them or the way that you may do things the way that you do them. But we love. We are trying to learn how to be the best parent that we can be.

hearts in a box - www.rbgstock.com

Sometimes it seems like pure   hard work and at other times it seems effortless. Sometimes we are filled with guilt about oh so many things. For some of us we think we do not have the blue print that we want because if we are really honest some of us don’t want to be the kind of parents that our parents were to us. It’s true the younger generation  always want to do better and think that they know better regardless of how many times they are told.

You may question how I express my love but even women who have made the difficult decision to give up their children do so because deep down somewhere they want the best for their baby. Sometimes we have a choice to surrender and sometimes we do not have a choice in the matter at all.

What I believe motivates us is that we truly want the best for our children.

I met a mother recently who expressed a deep longing to give her child the very best and it meant that her child would not be educated in her local area. Why? A multitude of reasons but she wanted her child to survive. In this day and ages when black boys are a target surviving the path to adulthood is all  parents wants. The struggle she encountered was that no one was listening to her. She got frustrated and angry, something we can all relate to. Now how we play these emotions out will separate you and me. Some parents go mental and go to war and the result can be so detrimental to the outcome that they really wanted. Sometimes we are faced with dealing with the stereotypes that others place on us. They assume that from our passion we somehow are just angry black mothers.  While it may be true that some of us are just angry black mothers their stereotypes prevent them from hearing that the person in front of them is frustrated, angry and at a loss as to how to get their point across. The receiver is looking at them from a place of fear. Some are patronising which just adds to the issue. In the middle of all this is miscommunication and the impact for the child is far worse.  If I think that you are not listening to me I have some choices. One is to tell my child not to listen to anything the school is saying and do what I say. The impact for that learner is rebellion and this stance will meet with severe consequences because my child does not have my experiences nor do they have the maturity to discern what behaviour would be most appropriate.  What the schools will see is that the child does not have the behaviour required for learning and treat them according to the symptoms of their actions rather than the cause.

heart behind bars- www.rbgstock.com

In response to this: miscommunication, stereotype and patronising stance, two things may happen.  1) A parent may take their child out of school. Where this may be a temporary solution it allows both parties to cool off and reflect, but if no one has talked about how they can reach out to each other to make the fear that created the situation go away, or how it can be  dealt with,  then nothing has been accomplished or 2) the child is classified as Special educational needs and side lined into a stream or pathway that can lead to exclusion or being placed in a pupil referral unit (PRU). This is not the desired outcome.  Some parents will move their children from the school altogether and some make the mistake of creating the same scenario all over again at the new school. The impact for the learner is huge. They have to make friends,  find their place in a completely new setting, and learn to trust all over again.  The staff will hopefully give the learner a new slate but in some cases the difficulties from one school travels to the other.  Staff can repeat the same behaviour that originally resulted in the parent leaving the last school. So what would deal with this? One simple thing:  listen.

Listening can soak up all the anger, frustration and leave a pathway clear for solutions. Pride that you have somehow won is not the outcome but rather gratefulness and appreciation that we have managed to overcome and find a solution that allows us to continue to achieve what we want: the best that we can give our children.

I know some parents are not able to do this because they may be fighting their own demons in the shape of drugs, mental health challenges or the fact that other things have got in the way of that love. Some have been brave enough to realise that they are getting in the way and have given their children to the ‘system’. It  is clear there is a crisis because there are so many children who need new parents to either foster or adopt them to give them the feeling of love and security. This is an opportunity which should not be entered into lightly or for monetary gain but should be for the opportunity to truly give something precious to that child. 

I have heard it said so many times that it takes a village to raise a child. Let us create the village of love.

heart spiral - www.rgbstock.com

Let us create that inside of ourselves and express it.  Let us open our hearts, let us love because we all deserve to be held and treated as treasured being who are filled with joy at the fulfilling of our true potential.