Tag: parenting

Posted in Christmas, Life

Has Christmas Cheer Evolved Into Christmas Greed?

Posted on by Kylie
I ask the questions and I also answer them. It’s like talking to yourself, but in writing
I woman enjoys looking at Christmas lights during the holiday season.
See Above Photo Creds

If I ask a question and then answer it myself, does that mean I am impatient? No. It means I am either asking a rhetorical question, or trying to have a conversation with my sister.

Could I get ahead financially if Christmas didn’t exist?

I think we can all agree that Christmas has turned into a holiday for capitalism instead of that in which it was truly intended. The birth of Jesus Christ has taken a back seat for so long that you can hardly recognize the original purpose of Christmas. If I had to guess, I would say probably 3/4 of the people celebrating the birth of Jesus, don’t even show up for Christmas services at any church. It has evolved from the birth of a savior into a commercial holiday design to break us financially and boost the economy.

Gift giving has turned away from giving people gifts you want to give them to taking requests and getting into fights over said requests on Black Friday.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am all about boosting the economy and I value the concept of capitalism. However, we have all year to exercise our capitalistic ventures. So, I find it almost offensive to take a sacred date and twist it to become a commercial holiday. Christmas is starting to be a date to worship money. No better than Valentine’s Day. This is a travesty to everybody that died in the name of Christianity, which was a lot of people. In medieval terms, it would’ve been called an excessive butt load.

As I prepare the Christmas list to go shopping for six children, it becomes very clear that they have no earthly idea how much money I make or what kind of bills we have to pay each month. A PlayStation five, iPhone 12 and Gucci shoes are just the tip of the iceberg. The ratchet part of me wants to yell out cuss words and call them names. I hate to tell them, but they will probably be getting sweatsuits and I hope they are happy with that and understand how lucky they are for them to not be windbreakers from the nineties. Which I would have loved as a teenager, by the way.

Parents through no fault of their own, other than being big softies, fall to the manipulation that their children become prey if they are not dressed in the most expensive apparel. I hate to break it to them, but if one provides children with other things, such as a personality and a backbone, those things don’t matter. What kind of message are we sending our children that we buy things we can’t afford so they can fit in socially? We all want to give our children the things we didn’t have, but don’t do it! It does more harm than good, especially when in excess.

As someone who is legally an adult, I don’t care at all if my co-workers or anyone I know are wearing a brand shirt or not. I don’t care how much their shoes cost. I care if they smell good and are relatively clean. I did care, briefly, as a teenager and begged my parents for a leather bomber jacket and Duckhead pants. My parents said no. I survived and learned to live with, and appreciate, what they could afford to give me.

My Christmas as a kid consisted of my parents giving me one nice gift along with a few small ones, which was a whole lot better than the apple and the orange that my mother supposedly got every year. I’m still not sure that is totally true, but I heard about it every Christmas. For that reason and many others, I would never have asked my parents for anything that cost over $500. Actually, I would never ask them for anything that cost over $70.

Extremely high expectations are just another example of how we have coddled our children to the point that they are spoiled and materialistic. I’m not saying to boycott Christmas, because it’s a beautiful holiday. But we shouldn’t let the materialistic aspect of it stress us out to the point of not being able to enjoy it, which is what many parents do every year.

Children will not remember you for what you bought them for Christmas, but they will remember how often you were there for them when they needed you. Going without the items one wants encourages hard work and builds strong character. I have never met anyone with a strong character that was ashamed of having one, nor anyone who didn’t consider it a great trait.

The bottom line is, do what you can afford, give what you want to give, and not one iota more. Personally, providing me and my husband with a strong financial future, so I don’t live in my children’s backyard in a portable storage unit, is more important than purchasing the latest DaBaby sweatshirt for $80.00.

Christmas is a religious holiday and should be honored as such. If you are not religious, but choose to celebrate the holiday anyway, it should be about appreciation, love, gratitude, and giving from your heart. Not giving from a list of $1,000 requests.

Originally posted on Medium.com

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Posted in Depression, Friendships, Life

My Teen Son’s First Heartbreak: Evil In The Form Of A Girl

Posted on by Kylie
I have never met anybody capable of such pure evil
An evil young girl strikes a sexy pose in a grocery store.
See above photo credit

Not much shocks me anymore. Especially the meanness of people. However, everyone that my teen son told, and everyone I told, was shocked and outraged by the sheer callousness of the evil that this young girl doled out. His first heartbreak was worse than most.

I have been through a tremendous amount of stress due to the nastiness of humans in my life. The older I get, the less I expect out of anyone. Even so, I was absolutely shocked when I was confronted with my son’s first heartbreak experience. I remember my first heartbreak like it was yesterday. I wouldn’t say it was the deepest cut, but it was the most shocking as it was my first time feeling broken hearted. Though depressing, I can say that it was a normal first heartbreak. It didn’t have the pure evil element that my son’s did.

The Meeting

They met through friends, but to me it felt like she wasn’t there one day and the next she was a constant fixture. I had red flags immediately. Everyone discounted them as this was my son’s first girlfriend and he has always been my sweet child. Everyone thought I was just being over protective.

It was nothing glaringly obvious. She just said little things that were passive aggressive that I would never have said to my boyfriend’s mother at any time. I chalked it up to bad manners.

They spent every day together and I would often have to kick her out at night. I knew they were having sex and I knew he was in love with her. He drove her 25 miles out to his father’s gravesite, which was a first for him. He had always gone out there alone, once he got his drivers license, and never even had taken a friend.

Things kept up hot and heavy for a few months and then the fighting began. A few weeks later, they took a break. This was supposed to be time away from each other to reassess, according to my son, and was not a full break up. I guess she didn’t get the memo.

Pure Evil

I will never forget his face. It was after midnight and I was sitting at my table on a Friday night working on a mosaic. The door suddenly opened and my son came in. It only took one second for me to register the look on his face. I jumped up and asked him what happened. The following is his account of the situation.

After agreeing to a break, my son was at a friend’s house playing video games and lord only knows what else that a group of boys do together. One of them became quiet and came up to my son to show him his phone.

The video, that was posted on social media, showed my son’s girlfriend, or ex depending on how you interpret the break, with another boy dancing. That in itself wasn’t so bad, but they were dancing on my ex-husband’s grave. My son was devastated and rightfully so. This was the type of meanness that bordered on evil and I was furious as he recounted the situation to me.

Backlash

It took everything in me that was holy to not go to jail over this assault. I prayed and restrained myself. I know that karma will do my dirty work one day. My son’s friends, however, did not show restraint. She immediately regretted what she did and took the video down.

Within days, she called me in tears and pleaded with me to call off the dogs. I told her that I didn’t release the dogs. Her evil behavior did. She was reaping a small amount of what she sowed. She said that her phone was blowing up with angry texts and friends were no longer speaking to her.

After showing no sympathy, she tried to threaten by telling me her mother was going to press charges. I quickly broke down how that would not work and how she was lucky I didn’t press charges. I’m sure that video would break some kind of grave desecration law or online bullying stance. Regardless of my obvious ignorance, I spoke with confidence and she slunk away in defeat.

Conclusion

That was over six months ago. My son still suffers from depression and cries about this humiliation and heartbreak. I still want to serve her a heaping dose of punishment, but I have to believe that karma will come for her eventually. Karma has her own timing.

In the meantime, I pray everyday that this stupid girl hasn’t stolen the goodness, trust, and love from my son while he is still only a teenager. I hope he can chalk it up to one bad apple in a bucket of amazing ones. He just happened to have gotten a very bad first taste of love gone bad.

Originally posted on Medium.

Posted in Family, Life, parenting

Love Without Shame: My Brilliant And Loved Lesbian Daughter

Posted on by Kylie
Love is never a bad thing
A gay pride flag flies above a brick building.
Photo Credits Above

News flash: what people do in the privacy of their bedroom is not my business. I do not care. I do care if someone is funny or kind or giving. I care if someone is a misogynist or a racist or abusive. I will never ever get mad because someone is happy and in love, no matter who it is with, as long as nobody is getting hurt. And, of course, all parties must be consenting adults.

All these homophobic people America seems to have lately is really ridiculous. Part of me feels like they’re just really insecure with their own sexuality. Maybe they have confusing feelings they haven’t dealt with yet. Or maybe I’m just noticing them so much now because my youngest daughter just came out as gay.

We must overcome the notion that we must be regular. It robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre.

Uta Hagen

All I know is that my daughter just came hurling herself out of the closet. My only job, after raising her to be an amazing and productive human being, is to be her biggest supporter and her human armor against any hate. It is not to judge or ostracize her for making decisions that are different from mine.

Even though I am not psychic, I already know she will spend her life tolerating and enduring the comments of mean people regardless of her sexual orientation. There are trolls everywhere in life and online. I will not be one more.

I spent seven years of my life trying to make a marriage work, in a conventional husband and wife relationship, while he was abusive. He almost ruined my children’s childhood and very nearly ruined me. Looking back, my children and I would’ve been a lot better off if I had been with someone that wasn’t a dirtbag and made me happy, regardless of gender.

People ask me if I am grieving all the stuff I won’t be able to do now that she is gay. There is no need for me to mourn. She is still the daughter I have always had, always adored and I know her heart now as well as I did before. Whom she chooses to love does not change her soul or make her fair game to be bullied. I promise that her choice of partner will not be what anyone remembers about her once they meet her.

She is absolutely brilliant, makes amazing grades, and loves animals. She especially loves reptiles and can spout off amazing facts about them as if she had been studying them all of her life. And all this at only ten. I have no doubt in her potential to change this world.

I pity the fools who can’t see beyond their own bigotry.

Originally posted on Medium.

Posted in Life, love, Poetry

All The Little Children

Posted on by Kylie

Small and mighty

A mother holds a newborn baby’s feet in her hands.
See above photo credits

This poem was originally posted on Medium. Original posting

The product of a love that will never die.

Note how easy they are to overlook.

Strong but fragile, resilient but breakable.

The seeds of your heart left to run wild.

Let them, before the wildness is banished.

Rearing is much easier when you threaten the unavoidable.

Mothers know that endless loss is the only criteria for parenting.

Fathers know the love will always be unrequited.

And all the parents learned about the small, devastating hours.

Spent wiping tears while spilling them in synchronicity.

Parental allusion for their little people is completely fictitious.

We are all blind to the truths.

Doomed only seeing the love they carry away from our hearts.

As they beat outside of us.

Posted in Family, Life, parenting

How To Become The Amazing Mother Your Daughter Deserves

Posted on by Kylie

As women, we should build our daughters up instead of giving them insecurities

 A depressed woman’s arm is written on in marker.
Depression

As a mother, before taking any action or making a decision of any kind, you must ask yourself, “How will this action that I’m considering right now affect my child?” Before ANY DECISION. It’s just a simple question. It’s not that hard. This one action will save you a lot of grief down the road.

It’s a lot harder to put something back together after you break it than it is to just keep it from getting broken to begin with. Take the answer you provide yourself and make the best choice for your child or children. Not for you. For them.

Women, and men obviously, have their own set of mannerisms and habits that drive me crazy as they are extremely damaging to children.

Men

Ladies, the company of your child is more important than the company of any man you are dating. Childhood is fleeting.

Children form their personalities early and you have essentially done all you can do for them as far as parenting goes by the time they are ten years old. After that, it is up to their experiences and their peers.

So, unless you want your child to grow up as a needy ho-bag by extension, you would be better off focusing now on trying to raise her to be educated and independent.

I know women are capable of having sons. But the damage they are capable of doing to their daughters is worthy of a separate article. Lead by example. Little eyes are always watching and little ears are always listening even if it might not seem that way.

Pretending you are dumb and acting ditzy is the most annoying and unflattering thing a female can do for a male’s attention. Encourage intelligence and independence.

I’m not lying when I tell you that I want to slap the hell out of any woman that acts like that.

Body Image

For 1000 different reasons, it is very common these days for women to have body issues and insecurities. Even so, please do your daughters a favor and stop publicly dieting and criticizing yourself. Stop calling yourself fat in front of them, even if you are. You may be a hippo, I know the feeling, but your daughter is an elephant. They never forget anything.

So please don’t project your body image issues and obsessions onto your children. The world is hard enough without adding to the load they will carry. Teach them about self-love, not self-hate. Teach them about confidence and how there’s a difference between that and arrogance.

Don’t idolize looking like a porn star, either. You don’t have to dress like a lot lizard. Do you really want to teach your daughters to act and look like that? Do you really want to teach your sons to desire that? Natural is beautiful.

Intelligence

We need to make intelligence in women sexy and valued. Less focus should be placed on boobs and more on brains by society, men, and ourselves. We need to set our own standards of beauty. We need to be proud of our accomplishments, our integrity and our character.

Stop hiding your intelligence from men. A real man won’t get intimidated by a strong, smart woman. He will value her as his partner. He will be proud to have such a person on his team. And if he’s not, you should not accept that as an acceptable mate for yourself.

Friendship

When your daughter or child is 25 and self-sufficient, y’all can be best friends. Until that day, you have to be the bad guy like the rest of us and actually parent your children. They have friends. They don’t need you to be a friend. They need you to be a parent.

They need routine, structure, love, guidance, and discipline. They need to be taught values and morals amongst 1 million other things. Focus on being a parent and you won’t have time to worry about the little, meaningless things that you shouldn’t be.

Parenting is hard and thankless. There are days that I cry myself to sleep and think I’m failing. But, I still get up every day and do it again. I owe that to them. And as a result of that, they have turned out to be the best thing I’ve ever done.

Whatever you want and need right now is irrelevant and will be until your children are raised.

Discipline

As I am sure many of you can also attest to, my mama used to tell me it hurt her more than it hurt me after she whipped my butt. I thought that was complete and total bullshit until I became a parent. No matter whether I was just getting on to them or saying I was disappointed, it was always hard to be the cause of anything but happiness to them.

I have had to put aside my personal feelings on how I want to handle things and do it the way I know I should instead. It is no coincidence that we have an entitled, unkind society. It is now more important than ever that we return to discipline, morals, and guidance.

I would rather have them mad at me for a little while so I can ensure that they grow up to be the best humans that they can possibly be. And because I did the hard parts, my children are amazing people that are responsible and independent.

We, as a society, are more worried about political correctness than we are about creating a good generation to leave after we are gone. We have let teaching morals and building a foundation of good character fall into disarray.

Hard-working men have now turned into blustering, overly sensitive little whiners that are dependent on other people for everything. Even men with full bushy beards don’t think they should have to do a full days hard work. Self-sufficiency and hard work has become a thing of the past for most people, not just men. Morality is going out the door with it at a very fast pace.

Instead of hiding behind closed doors and praying for a better world, we should all be working diligently to create one. I hope to teach my children not to wait for change, but to be the cause of change. It only takes one person or one small act of rebellion to spark the fires of change.

At least I can take comfort knowing that there will be a few hard-working men in the next generation. Along with a few hard-working, self-sufficient women. Because that is how I am intent on raising him.

I might not end up accomplishing much in my lifetime, but if being the mother that my children is all I can achieve then I’ve done enough and more than a lot of others have. It would be more than enough of an accomplishment to make me proud of my life.

Posted in Death, Friendships, Grief, Life

The Startling Death Of My Son’s Best Friend

Posted on by Kylie
My beautiful ocean scene with the words an unexpected death
Canva

Sometimes, we just don’t have any good answers for our children, especially when death is concerned. Sometimes, we just cannot make the pain go away. I had to fight myself against issuing generic platitudes to my grieving son because no answers were sufficient for the questions that he had when he lost his best friend suddenly.

Don’t be dismayed by good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.

Richard Bach

I have four kids and two stepchildren that are the center of my universe. My youngest son, and third child, has suffered a tremendous loss at only the tender age of 13. His best friend and sidekick died. For the sake of his family’s privacy, I will call this young man Daryl in this article. Daryl will be remembered by more than his family. My son is going to make sure of that.

Daryl was a bright thirteen year old boy that liked to play video games online and basketball outside of my house with the local neighborhood boys. My son, Nolan bonded with him quickly over their mutual love for Kobe Bryant, dark humor, video games, and attitudes.

Daryl had fought and overcome cancer three times in his short little life. He had most recently gotten the stats to indicate he was beating it again.

You never heard him complain, but he had a life filled with pain. He would be missing in action during the worst parts, but continually stayed in contact with my son via online messaging. My son was not one to talk about it. Like many boys are apt to be when it comes to emotions, he dealt with it in his own way and still does.

When COVID came around, Daryl was confined to his room. His immune system was already battered so his parents weren’t taking any chances by not issuing a strict quarantine. They spent the summer playing video games online and plaguing each other with dark jokes and pranks. They were showing their love as boys will.

School

Three days before school was to be let back in session, Daryl’s mom went to wake him and found that he had passed away in his bed. Though he was beating the cancer, he had passed away from a sudden aneurism.

Nolan found out later on that day and came to tell me right away. They had played on the X-box the night before and he seemed fine, my son told me in shock.

As grief tends to do, it had a delayed reaction on Nolan. He would forget for a moment and then he would go to text him and remember. He would get online and remember.

I believe the grief took a toll on his immune system because within days he was fighting a huge swollen gland from a sudden bout of mono and strep throat. Days after getting on antibiotics, he developed a mono rash. He ended up missing the first two weeks back to school.

I didn’t realize how deep the friendship had gone until I took him to school on his first day. Signing him in, the office staff all gathered around and hugged him and told him how sorry they were. It seemed that the boys were something of a duo at the school.

A beautiful art general

Art

A few weeks later, I came home from work and went to greet all of the kids, which is my routine when I come in the door. After I greet the animals, of course.

I found Nolan in his room thumbing through a journal. He told me that for art class they all had to keep an art journal with drawings, thoughts, and the such. He said that after class the art teacher had given Daryl’s art journal to him.

Without me even telling him, he told me that he wanted to make a copy for himself and carry the original to Daryl’s mother. The image of the young boy’s self painted image in the journal made tears well up in my own eyes. Not to mention the fact that my teenager, famous for no empathy towards anyone but himself within our household, was showing empathy towards Daryl’s family.

I took the journal to work and made the copy. It was filled with what you would expect from a thirteen year old boy being forced to journal, but I knew the gift would be a priceless artifact given to a grieving mother. Another link to a love like no other.

This will not be the last time my son experiences a tragedy. I am proud of the way he has handled this loss and the way he continues to keep Daryl’s memory alive by talking about him. All too often, people try and drown pain away by ignoring it. Only by dealing with our emotions will we ever truly heal from any heartbreak or pain.

There is no explanation for a life cut that short. I won’t lie and say it’s part of a plan I’m not privy to. The only thing I can say for sure is that where he went has to be so much better than what he went through here during his short, pain filled existence.

Hold your loved ones tight. We never know when a moment will be the last.

I know this was a depressing article so if you would like to laugh now, here is a link to my latest Medium article about being a Golddigger!