I saw a post on LinkedIn recently that really hit home to me.
It was a lady talking about her two grown up sons, one who lives away from home but visiting, talking loud early in the morning. But instead of complaining at the noise and hoping they'd tidy up after themselves she chose to lay and enjoy the sound of her boys laughing together and having fun and in her own words feel "an explosion of maternal heart fuzziness". And took this time as a reminder to stop and appreciate the little moments.
This really resonated with me. Although my boys are "only" 12 and 14, I feel like I have moments where my fuse may be short and I may not really appreciate the small things.
Sometimes I feel like I want peace and to tell them to be quiet but then take a second to restructure my thoughts and then enjoy hearing them laugh together or just talking to each other, even if what they are saying to each other makes no sense to me whatsoever.
They live with their dad for one week, then with me the next.
They have a lot of independence at my house.
The bit that really helped when I read the post on LinkedIn wasn't about the noise, I'd already had my "thought restructure" with this a while ago. But the thing that really hit me was that I can get so annoyed at cleaning up their mess, when they make breakfast and don't put things away, but really sometimes it's trivial, and I could look at it completely differently.
"It's good they're at the age when they want to do things for themselves"
"They didn't want to wake me up and were hungry so it's sweet that they let me have more sleep and made their own breakfast"
"They know I'm busy with work so chose to save me a job and make their own lunch".
Of course my stress levels would be lower if they did just put the bacon away, put their rubbish in the bin or tie up the bread properly, or put their plates and glasses back in the kitchen.
I think sometimes I can focus more on these things rather than the positives.
The fact they are independent, they can make their own food, they can make a coffee or cup of tea (Harry actually makes the best cups of tea!), feed our cats, put their clothes in the wash, use the washing machine, mow the lawn etc, is incredible and actually really sets them up for when they are older and eventually leave home.
