I took a break today whilst I was eating lunch to wander through some of the old photos on flickr. Connor is 1 month old in the picture above, Declan is around 20 months. They’re on my mum’s bed.

My Mum doesn’t like to make her bed.

She will usually wake up in the morning complaining of aches and pains, only to discover she’d been sleeping on a water bottle that got lost  in amongst her sheets, or her glasses that she’s been searching for the past week. There are always pencils and notebooks, if you sit on the edge you generally risk being stabbed by stationary lost in the mattress

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The little trip back in time got me thinking about the kids, and how I’ve raised them so far.

My belief is that our children are on loan to us, from the moment they’re conceived we slowly start paying back that loan, to them. They start off 100% relying on their mothers in the womb. They’re born and their body takes over the automated actions, but they still rely on us as parents, to nurture them, both physically and mentally.

As each year, month, even moment passes, bit by bit they lose their reliance on us, very slowly as they gain independence and step away from needing Mum and Dad. By the time they’ve reached adulthood you would hope that most of that loan is paid off, but it will never be completely finished, I think every parent holds onto a little bit of their child, even when they’ve up and grown and moved to the otherside of the world and had babies of their own.

Our children do not belong to us, we’re borrowing them, and just like when you borrow anything, you need to hand it back in good condition. With every parenting decision I make, I think how this will affect them, in the present, and in the future, whether that’s tomorrow or in their teens. I hope the boys feel nurtured, loved and secure and that they grow to learn responsibility, compassion and right from wrong. I want them to be comfortable in themselves, no matter what choices they make in life, but also to be respectful and understanding of those who make different choices.

Looking back at my boys when they were so little and helpless, it makes me think whether I’ve achieved that so far. I believe I have, it hasn’t all been roses, there has been mistakes, I’ve changed the rules half way through the game before, and sometimes even completely changed the game. But overall, I think that Dan and I have done an acceptable job of looking after the two little beings we’ve been placed in charge of temporarily. We haven’t been perfect, no one is. But, most of the time, when I look at my sons I feel a sense of pride in the fact that we’re still all in one piece, we’re all fairly well adjusted and we’re all content and happy.

Of course, when my kids are in therapy in their 30s, they may say something different.

Declan will speak about the time he asked for alpha-getti and I didn’t look at the tin properly and gave him number-getti instead, or possibly the time when he was mentally scarred because I made him wear his hood up when it was raining.

Connor will talk about the mockery he had to face at a young age for still being mute and immobile, waaaaay past the time that he should.

It will all be my fault, it usually is

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Hmm. I think the TLDNR version of this would be “don’t fuck up your kids”.

I prefer my version though.