Dear Children...An Open Letter to My Teenagers...

A young cousin of mine posted something she saw on Facebook recently, and although I responded to the post there, I thought I might respond here as well. I don't even know if any teenagers read my blog at all, but if it helps even one person, it's worth posting.

Here is the post that she shared...


And here is my response: 

Dear children... If you only know how much we do love you! We only(or mainly) get upset with you for your choices because we have already experienced life, and pain, and regret, and we want protect our precious children from all of the pain and hurt that life has to offer. You can't know until you are a parent yourself... we get angry because we want the best of everything for our children and we feel helpless when they make choices that we feel will lead to heartache or unhappiness. We love you NO MATTER WHAT- but we want you to be happy, so we are happier when we feel you are making good choices. When you are are heartbroken and crying because someone/something hurt you, we are heartbroken too because we want SO BADLY for you to be happy, and we want to hold you and rock you until you are all better, but we know that that won't work, because you shrug off our hugs and resent our words of guidance. And we hurt inside too, and sometimes,  we even lash out because we are hurting inside for our babies and we don't know how to fix things (as mammas and daddies feel they should). But we love you...if you only knew how much!!

I feel very blessed that my children (at least at this point) are making good choices. But there are times when they haven't, or don't. I want them to know that I love them, even if I don't accept bad choices as ok. Hug your babies-even if they aren't little anymore!