Wellness is an all-encompassing journey
My 10 year old son, the oldest of my pack, loved playing “in-real-life.” games when he was younger.
Around the age of 5 he would ask, “Can we play black-ops In-real-life?” meaning that he wanted to hide nerf guns around the park, select teams and bases and then have an all-out nerf battle.
Yes, we could play black-ops in real life.
Little did he know that many people did the things that he saw on TV “in real-life” all of the time. Just slightly different and a bit more real life like.
My middle child now asks to play things “in real-life”. He is an older 4. So I am guessing it is the age. Around 4 to 5 years old children start wanting to recreate what they see. This is a big deal in real life for real.
Taking TV and other outside influences out of this equation what can I do to help my children recreate positive behavior, kindness, self-love and acceptance? …. Talk about the many tasks of mothering in real-life.
These thoughts and self-engaged questions initially brought me to the serious side of mothering and parenting. The side where many of us are too hard on ourselves and too hard on our children. This serious side is a little judgmental and can be very rule based. Recently, I have been reminding myself to curiously and playfully enjoy the time with my children. So rule based mamma is not where I personally want to mother from all of the time.
There is always a balance that ties in the feeling of the rightness and wellness of things.
Mothering in real-life is a lot harder than the mothering that is showcased in brief posts, stories and shows.
It takes constant creativity, compassion, coffee, patience and bargaining with sprinkles of laughter, rules, guidelines, tears, facing fears, finding strength, courage and most of all connecting heart to heart through communication and love.
I love the crap out of my babies, but I also mother the crap out of them. Which in real life is not always hugs and kisses. There are times that I throw a stink eye and use my mother bear growl to settle a room down. Many times my sweet littles tell me they don’t love me anymore and that I have ruined their day. These babies throw little daggers at my heart in the shape of words, hurt feelings and pouting lips.
Mothering in real life is hard. So why would we never give it up? Because this is the realness times ten.
Mothering reminds us of our own choices, responsibilities and human abilities. Through the thick of it all, we experience joy and inspiration. We uncover self truths, witness unbelievable things and feel human connection that comes from caring for another person and this is irreplaceable.
These developing humans surprise us Every. Single. Day. They make us proud and we may not even tell them how amazing they are. We are shocked by their beauty and dumbfounded by the connectedness to deeper wisdoms of the world that they hold. They, more than most, know what is right and wrong. They feel, sense and see things through the clearest glass and it is through time that that glass begins to fog.
It is okay that they want to play real life because it is in that play that they connect the dots of what is play and what is real; what holds meaning.
So, how can we mother so that our children’s glass stays clear longer, or rarely fogs so that they can continue to see the difference between playing real life and that which is real life. How do we make sure they don’t get covered in blanket after blanket of false identities from the words they hear, the feelings they experience and the pressures they sense?
........ Do it for real and let it hold meaning.
This is the journey of parenting; of motherhood. We get to mother in real life and that's pretty special.
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