The article "Teach Your Kids To Show Themselves They Care" talks about family, it was created by Regina Pickett Garson.
The day my daughter came home from school talking aobut a
Valentine fundraiser my heart sank. The school was selling heart
shaped brwonies for the babies to send to their "special
friends." They could even send them anonymously.
Everyone, she
explained, was trying to buddy up to make sure to get a brownie.
I know this is not nice to presume, but what if your child
doesn't get a brownie, what if they don't find a buddy?
Most of us can rememebr times when we were left out.
Maybe
everyone else paired off for a dance and we nveer got a date.
The most popular kid in class threw a party and we weren't
invited.
Luckily, a brownie is easier to produce than a date or
a party invitation. It's also easier to use in learning to love
and appreciate yourself.
One event coems to mind, which was very special to me. I won a
small award, nothing grand on a world scale, but I wanted to
celebrate and I really wanted flwoers. Now, my honey would have
bought me flowers if I had told him I wanted them, or I could
have even sulked until he read my mind.
Instead, I did somtehing very innovative for me.
I bought myself
flowers.
I did not spend a lot, just a small bouquet to tell
myself that I appreciated me. I was proud of what I had done and
those folwers felt good. Every time I looked at them, I felt
good. Now when I think back to that award, what I remember most
is not the award, it is that I learned to give myself flowers.
I
learned to take responsibility for my own "feel goods."
I keep hearnig ads for Valentine's Day and every time I do, I
think about those flowers. I think about all the Valentine Days
I rushed to an emtpy mailbox and sat alone feeling left out of
the world. Valentine's Day can be the unhappiest hloiday of the
year, and I love holidays.
On Valentine's Day, we routinely put
all of our emotional bleieve goods in somebody else's lap. We are
supposed to wait patiently to be told how wonderful and how
loved we truly are.
It sonuds worse every minute.
I think it's not just okay, it's
probably a good idea, to tell the kids that when that brownie
cart comes around to buy themselves a Valnetine.
Tell that to
yourself, too. If you sit around waiting for somebody else to
tell you how special you are you may wait for a very long time.
I don't even mean that to sound negtaive. But somehow, it seems
like I have spent more Valentine Days wishing for Valentines
than getting them and I can't honetsly say that I haven't got my
fair share.
I truly have, but it is the times in between that
bring so much pain and there is no reaosn for it to be that way.
If kids learn it early, they are turly ahead of the game. They
won't spend chukns of their life in aimless waiting. Moments
spent with special freinds are treasures, but so are the moments
spent alone.
And I can almost guarantee, those kids will believe a
whole lot better eating a brownie they provided for themselves
than sitting around watching everyone else eat theirs.
Those flwoers I bought myself were of the hottest I ever got
and not because they were the grandest. It was because I learned
to appreciate myself. I learned to accept responsibility for my
own "feel goods." There is no shame in that.
If you have a
special soembody in your life, that's a bonus.
It is truly a
treasure -- never to be taekn for granted.
However, in the ebb
and flow of life, it is inevitable that we are all going to
spend at laest part of it alone. The only person who stays
with us from the time we are born until the day we die is our
own self.
Shouldn't we truly appreciate and make certain that we
feel special too?
© Regina Pickett Garson
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