hEr KiDs... THeir VoiCeS

I haven’t talked much about my kids yet or much. Let’s recap. I have four kids, two girls two

boys. The girls are 26 and 21 and the boys are 13 and 8. Raising these kids has definitely been a journey, and not without lots of chaos. My introduction to parenting was my bonus baby which is the now 21. I was 20 when I became her Bonus-Mom and she was 3 years old. Then I had my first son at 24 years of age. And I adopted my cousin when she was 13 and I was 26. And then had my last son when I was 29. I know that probably sounded confusing huh. I didn’t know much about being a mom obviously. Being a bonus-mom wasn’t hard, but I have to say my husband, myself, and her mom did not have the co-parenting thing down and there were definitely struggles. But that’s a totally different blog for another time. Raising a baby was easy because he was my world and you didn’t have to do anything but change them, feed them, and bath them and make sure they are safe. I felt thrown to the wolves when I adopted my cousin.

A 25-year-old raising a 13-year-old was a freaking experience. The only thing I had to go off of was how I was parented and everyone else’s advice but my own because I didn’t have a clue. There was lots of growing pains and defiance but love too. And that’s also another blog for another day. So, for this post I wanted to talk about kids having voices. I didn’t have a voice growing up. I think I may have touched on this in a previous blog post, but for sure in a podcast episode. When I was growing up kids didn’t have opinions and were to be seen not heard. It was a definite to stay out of the grownups business, out of grown people faces, act your age, and absolutely under no circumstance do you say the word lie. Lying or lie were the biggest curse words ever in the history of curse words. I mean there were a lot of rules to being a child when I was growing up. And because of these rules I didn’t feel seen or heard and sometimes felt forgotten. Their definition of disrespect back then was crazy. Things that once you grow up you realize wasn’t disrespectful in the least. I always promised that I would do things differently when I had kids.

I failed y’all. Okay, okay I'm being too hard on myself. So maybe I shouldn’t say failed because all in all the oldest two turned out fine. But I definitely had some fuck ups, for lack of a better word, and things I wish I could do over. I turned out to be just like my mother (and I’m not saying that was a bad thing, I’m speaking on the things I didn’t want to repeat). I was strict as hell. Things had to be done a certain way, regiments had to be stuck to, discipline was at the forefront, no spending the night with friends, no hanging out, chores daily, no talking back, not a hint of an attitude or raised voice, no disrespect of any kind, and no opinions needed unless asked. I mean that’s basically how I operated in so many words. My household was a lot of authoritarian though I was fighting for balance and wanting it to be authoritative. I was made to the be the disciplinarian too. The no’s and discipline 97% of the time came from me. My husband said since it was girls I should talk to them, even though we made majority of all decisions together. Whew chile, and again that’s another blog for another day because I have lots to say about that.

One of the things I hated growing up was that I didn’t have a voice because that followed me into adulthood and directly impacted many situations that I found myself in. And I hate to admit it, but I feel like I stifled my girls’ voices in our home too. Them sharing their opinions of what they thought and how they felt was disrespectful because that’s what I knew. That’s how I grew up. I had to have been a confusing person.

Because I would ask for these feelings and thoughts and then often times disregard them and expect them to understand. I know they felt, why even talk or tell her what I think when she’s not really going to listen, I mean because I would think that if it was me. I remember my oldest daughter and I were talking, having a disagreement or argument about something and when responding to me she said, “I know “You don’t care”. I have to admit when she said that to me, it hit me because I realized I definitely always said “I don’t care” even though that wasn’t what I truly meant. To her I don’t care translated as me not caring about how she felt, what she thought or what she had to say. Those were not my intentions, but sometime intentions don’t matter. How what you said or did made them feel matters most. After that day I stopped saying I don’t care because she taught me a lesson.

We forget that our kids have voices and those voices matter. If no one else hears them they should always feel completely heard at home by the ones who are supposed to love them the most. We are teaching our kids how to communicate with the outside world but most importantly how to communicate with us, their parents. Not allowing them to be and feel heard will lessen their chances of telling anyone as a child or adult how they feel and what’s wrong. They will find it hard to sometimes put their feelings into words and even if they know them, they won’t speak them no matter how bad they want to because they feel their feelings and words will go unheard because that’s what they are used to. That’s what’s been repeated to them so many times. Or like me they may go to the opposite extreme, unable to find balance (until they learn), and bluntly say how they feel with aggression. In case you’re wondering, assertiveness and aggression are two different things, so I in no way meant to say assertive instead of aggression.

I realized the things I did wrong with the girls and I’m trying my best to do it differently with the boys. As of almost two years ago they can now say lie. My husband still doesn’t quite like that part but I’m not going to treat it like a curse word because it’s just stupid. I am doing better with acknowledging their feelings and wanting them to feel heard even if my answers or punishments don’t change. I still hear them out and do better at explaining my whys, my reason and no longer using the oh so famous “because I said so”. I also don’t treat their why’s as questioning my authority. Because that’s also a major one in the black households and was a big no no for me when I was raising the girls. Your kids should be able to ask you why and you should be able to answer. I don’t want to make this blog too long so there will be a part two to speak more about that.

It’s important that you listen to your children, let them speak, hear them out. They need to know if they can’t count on anyone else in the world to listen to them, they can damn sure count on you. Parenting is far from easy, I so know this a million times over, but we can learn from each other, from our mistakes and be intentional about how we proceed. We don’t want our kids to have to heal from the trauma of us. There is so much that we do right, but we also always think more about the things we did wrong or could have done differently. And guess what, there’s always a chance to change and do it better. Start today, do things better, find the alternative that works for you and your babies.