Growing up my mom always worked. For the first while she worked away from home, and honestly I HATED it. I hated it when I was sick and instead of calling my mom to come and get me it was the babysitter. I hated it when we had some mean babysitters who would stick us in the bedroom and not let us out. I hated that I went to someone else’s house right after school instead of going home. When my mom got pregnant with my second to youngest brother she decided to try and find a way to work from home. She did day care. She had phone jobs. I hated those too, but not nearly as much as I hated her being away from home. There was a certain comfort I got knowing I would be greeted with a smile, questioned “how was your day?”, and an after school snack – one of my favorites was graham crackers and frosting.
As I got older I took having my mom home for granted. I was at the point that I needed to be held accountable for grades and such, and at that point I remember wishing that my mom worked. I was telling my friend how lucky she was that she did not have someone to answer to each day, and that she could do whatever she wanted because her mom worked. She got kind of choked up and said something like ” I wish my mom was not so tired when she got home that she never asked me about my grades. I wish she had an after school snack waiting for me, there to ask me how my day was. I wish it felt like she cared.” I will never forget that. I had an amazing mom who sacrificed so much to keep the family going by working 2 jobs most of the time. She worked hard so she could be at home when we got there, made sure there was a connection after being out the in the world all day long.
Communication with our kids is SO vital. If there is no communication, no feeling of caring and love, they will look for that somewhere else. An after school snack is the perfect time to chat and ask questions. My daughter will tell me a lot about all the kids, things they said, the way they acted, who the trouble makers are, and who the good kids are. I love having these conversations. If you have to work, take the extra 10 minutes and talk to your kids before you put them to bed, but talk to them. You want them to talk to you when things are trivial, so when they get older and need someone to talk to about more important things they will feel like they can tell you.
Check out these links by some awesome bloggers of questions you can ask your kids rather than just leaving it at “How was your day?”
See the Happy!
-Kirsten
I love this! Just pinned!