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Sunday 30 March 2014

Parenting done right

I think being a parent is the best job in the world. I know it's easy for me to say because I don't have kids bla bla bla, but I am so so excited for when I do become a parent. You get to pour everything that you are into this tiny person who is made up of you and the person you love (hopefully!). There's something so wonderful about that. Is this getting too mushy for a seventeen year old girl's blog yet?


As cheesy as it is to say (and I'm sure so many other girls my age say the same), I absolutely love children. I'm not going to go listing all the child work placements that belong on my CV but I've loved every second that I've spent working with kids (cringearoonie) and I'm good with them. There's no way to say that without sounding cocky but two people maximum will read this post anyway so I'll write a cringe little secret: I've been called um, "gifted" with a "talent" for working with children. I'm reading this back and dying of embarrassment but it's kind of a passion. Uh oh, cringe again.


This is why I'm so bloody excited to have my own kids. I love other people's so much that I can't imagine how I'm going to feel about my own. I'll probably cry with happiness all day long just from watching them. If I could, I'd drop out of school now and start a family. Like, in my head, I'm ready to be a mum. That sounds so stupid, I know, and of course it's not going to happen. I don't have enough money for that, nor do I even have anyone to have babies with, and I want to get a degree and have an actual job before I settle down.


So this leads me to admitting that I've thought about how I want to raise my (as of yet) non-existent children. Like, there's no harm in writing it all down in a post which is exactly what I'm going to do now. I'd love to have two boys and two girls, because I feel like every girl should have a sister and that every boy should have a brother, and I don't want just sons or just daughters. I also want a big-ish family, so four seems like a pretty good number. I realise you can't plan this kind of stuff bla bla bla, but this is just what would be ideal.


I've got names sorted but a lot of other girls my age have too so I don't even feel too bad about that! The top contenders right now are Emmeline and Nicolas. But little Emmeline and Nico won't be subjected to gender stereotypes. What does anyone even gain from dressing a girl in pink and a boy in blue? It makes me so angry at work when little boys ask for pink balloons and their dads say "god, I've got a weird one here! You want blue, don't you?" I'll definitely want to know the baby's sex before it's born but I probably wouldn't tell anyone else because - and this sounds so stupid - but as everyone buys the baby presents, I want gender neutral ones. Bring on the yellow, green, orange, red and purple. What's cuter than a baby's room with orange walls?


Maybe this all sounds a bit too controlling but I've heard about mothers who are a lot more anal than this when raising their kids (like hello, Gwyneth Paltrow is mad). I think maybe part of it is that old cliche, you know where parents push every dream they never achieved onto their kids (cue "I'm giving up your dream Dad, not mine!" - every white boy in every film). I want my not-yet-born-or-even-conceived Emmeline and Nico to be good at everything that I wasn't, like singing and dancing, and playing instruments and being good at maths. But I also want them to be like me in that I'm bloody loving life and that I try to do something nice for someone else everyday.


Perhaps I shouldn't even be thinking about what I want them to be like because they should decide for themselves who they want to be. But parents shape who you are as a person and parenting is a huge part of how you treat other people and how you act in every day life. I'm thoughtful like my dad but I'm also really chatty like my mum. I'm sometimes bad tempered like my mum too and I'm totally unadventurous like my homebody dad. Everyone gets the good bits and the bad bits from their parents.


I think this is just going to get a lot more rambly if I continue but what I'm trying to say is that I think I know what my parenting style (if that's even a thing) is going be. Do you?


(Also, I haven't proofread this yet, and probably won't ever do so - apologies for any typos!)

1 comment:

  1. Personally, the thought of ever having children makes me panic, I think I might just stick to cats and books haha. But I do agree that it is sad when people view their children as useless when they can't use them to show off, and the whole 'baby boys can't wear pink' thing is absolutely ridiculous.

    http://whimsicalprocrastination.blogspot.co.uk/

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