Learning to Say I love You Everyday #parentingtips

I know my parents loved me but they weren’t exactly the most demonstrative of their feelings and certainly, saying “I Love You” was very much a sparse statement that I heard throughout my youth.

I remember my freshman room mate went to hug me at the end of the year and I recoiled in horror that I would have to actually to “touch” her.  Obviously, I have “learned” to hug and touch people, maybe it was living in Italy and France that changed my behaviour certainly not my mother’s homeland, I love the Japanese but not there are not the  huggy type people.

 

I will admit that even though I feel more comfortable hugging people but that doesn’t mean I am comfortable saying “I love you” (past boyfriends can testify to that fact.)

I remember distinctly the day I had to drop my daughter off at day care for the first time. She was about 5 months old,  I hugged her tightly, cried a bit and wandered off to work in a daze. Did I say “I love you”.  No, it felt odd to say it in front of the her care givers. All the way to work and the entire day, I felt terrible like “what type of mom,  am I going to be,  if I can’t say I love you” to my own child.

It took me quite a bit of time in fact to say it out loud to my daughter but I learned to say it because I knew that even though my parents loved, I would have loved it more if they said it aloud. I just did not want to be the type of mom who did show affection or acknowledge my feelings. Here we are 1o years later and sometimes I just tell my daughter “I love you” for no apparent reason and she answers back “I love you more.”

So why am I bringing this long winded story about learning to say “I love you” is that  dealing with  a tween girl can be frustrating and just plain annoying. Every week without fail, daughter will insists on either looking for something or asking where something is literally 10 minutes before we are leaving for school. This irritates me no end and she knows it. I wander around my apartment yelling about how annoying this is and she yells back.

This week, she decided that she would “do” her hair with 20 minutes until we left. Now I had warned her she needed to get up early to do it but Noooo. So there she is with her hair sticking up and 10 minutes to go. I yelled, she screamed and put a hat on her head.

Even though I knew she wouldn’t read it until 2:40pm, I texted her “I love you” and she texted back “I love you more .”

So I have gone from never having to say “I love you” to ensuring that no matter the argument or yelling and screaming (because the middle school and high school years are coming we know that won’t change), I will always say “I Love You.”