Tonight was another night of taking a break to watch TV. I don’t watch much TV but when I do, I try to watch things that will uplift me like biographies or HGTV. ~smile~
Tonight I watched Extreme HomeMakeOver again. This was an especially great experience because I got to watch it with my sons. As the family who was being helped introduced themselves, my sons asked all type of questions and I was able to explain to them about how great it is to help someone in need.
When the woman said that she didn’t value herself my sons asked what that meant.
I cleared my throat. “It means that no one ever told her that she had to love herself. No one ever told her that she was brilliant and spectacular and that they’d love her no matter what she did in life.”
My sons looked at me incredulously. “No one ever told her that?” my younger son exclaimed.
I shook my head and closed my eyes before responding. “No, Boo Boo. No one ever told her that.”
My sons don’t understand that some people, including myself, would fall over and die to be able to hear words like that from our parents. But I guess I’m glad that they don’t. Being the kind of parent that I am, and their father is, we make sure to praise them to the heavens and remind them that they are brilliant and destined for success. They hear it so much that they just sigh and say, “I know Mama, you always tell me that.”
I do tell them those type of things often because I want to give them the things that I wish I had gotten growing up. Yes, I had all the money, the outfits and the food..but what I was missing was appreciation, emotional support and affection.
I remember a month or so ago, I was talking to Tamara about how I noticed that women tend to show more love to their sons, especially when they have never had a man to show them love. Sometimes they go overboard trying to win their child’s affection, because that is what they are missing in their life.
“That’s probably the reason why you don’t discipline your boys,” Tamara said. “You feel like you always have to explain things to them.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head as I explained my definition of discipline to her. No, I don’t think discipline is yelling at your kids or beating them. I don’t yell or curse at my children at all. And I only spank them when necessary, but for the most part I speak to them in even tones and explain things to them as though they are PEOPLE.
As a result of hearing mostly criticisms, never being hugged or told that I am great and wonderful AT HOME, I am still learning to love myself 28 years later. AND…in my life’s search for love, I have attracted men who deal with me in the same way because that behavior is what I’m used to.
I don’t think children should be treated like animals and hit or cursed at and belittled for making mistakes. Nor do I think that the only words out of our mouths to them should be words of criticism. Yes, we have to correct them, but I think there’s a softer way to go about it without teaching them that screaming is the proper way to get your point across.
Once you start out screaming and cursing you’ll have to keep that up to get their attention. Because I never did that to my sons a simple, “You are dissappointing me” does the trick. They wouldn’t know how to respond to someone who is screaming in their face. Because that is how my parents communicate with each other, when my sons witness it, it frightens them.
After the HomeMakeOver show was over, I sent my sons to bed and then washed the dishes before sitting down to watch Oprah’s Big Give. I haven’t watched this show from the beginning because I’m not a die hard Oprah fan, although I do respect her hustle and career. I watched the show the first time last week and it caught my attention because they were in Miami.
It was funny to sit and watch as they went from neighborhood to neighborhood and met with people and organizations that I knew personally. The part when they showed the man going from house to house in that bad neighborhood giving out electronics made me cry. I don’t know how you grew up but my extended family has lived like that before.
It’s wild that I’m studying a book called The Science of Getting Rich and the beginning of the book made me laugh when the author proclaimed that having money is the only way to happiness (or something like that) because you can’t show love unless you have money because giving is the way to show love. That can’t be true? Or is it?
As I watch the shows like Extreme HomeMakeOver and The Big Give, it seems that money changes peoples lives. Even something as small as a $500 gift card would seem to be a miracle.
I know that if I was given $500 I would think it was a miracle right now…
Maybe the author of that book was on to something.
All I know is…I want to GIVE BIG like the people on that show. And that’s my plan. I will work, sow seeds and be a blessing to many.