I have decided to remove “I Don’t Care” from my vocabulary. If you are like me, I catch myself telling my children daily that I don’t care. Whether it is in response to excuses for fighting or yelling, and when they ask for my opinion.
Until one day I stopped myself and asked what kind of impact my words were having on my children. The following list I came up with is as follows:
- “stop bothering me”
- “this is not my problem”
- “deal with it yourself”
- “I really don’t care because my day is busy enough”
- “your thoughts and feelings mean nothing to me”
- “grow up and handle your own sh*t”
- “you do not matter to me”
- “Mommy is busy and has no room for you”
- “thing issue has no impact on me, so I don’t care”
- “I stopped caring about your wants as soon as you learned how to make your own decisions”
When I looked at the list, it made my stomach turn and I wondered what my children thought of me because of it. I do care about their thoughts and feelings and I have worked hard to alter my behaviour to create a positive environment. Because of this one phrase, I used it to cause a lot of pain to my children. The image below is from Cups to Crowns.
Changing For The Better
At that moment, I removed “I don’t care” from my usual responses and replaced it with more accurate statements. Ones that were helpful and relevant to the situation. No more will I use blank statements to be a catch-all response for my children. I don’t want them to question my love for them.
As a stay-at-home parent, you think I would have more capacity to listen and understand my children. But my wants and needs were getting in the way, and I was not taking care of myself as well as I thought. Another solution I came up with which I believe would help this situation is one-on-one adult interaction with my children. I had it with my grandma when I was a little girl and it helped me grow.
Live Joy, Renee