As parents, we spend our adult lives sacrificing for our children and hoping we teach them well enough to send them on their way when they are old enough to be on their own. We pray that what tears we have shed for them have been felt and acknowledged and will one day come full circle for us as they begin their own journey as parents.
When your kids have grown a little more mature, a day to spend with only them as a way to say “thanks for being my great kid”, and then to follow it up with a sit down together reading session of “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein may help to open their eyes to what you do for them as their mother or father. The story shows them that your love doesn’t stop no matter what they might do.
“Once there was a tree, and she loved a little boy…” from The Giving Tree
This book, a 1974 New York Times Outstanding Book Award winner, covers many aspects of life as a parable created to show that caregivers love unconditionally, no matter the attitude the child flaunts as they grow to adulthood and they give for them until they have nothing left and are utterly spent. Sometimes our kids realize it, sometimes not before it is too late and they can’t put back what damage they have done. Yet, it was all done for the love of the child.
Every parent should gift a copy of this book to their kids to be handed down for the generations to come. Rarely has a book wrung my heart and brought tears to my eyes as I reflected back on my own relationship with my parents. It has set the bar on what sort of parent I wished to be for my children and maybe it will do the same for them.
