by Ashley Cormier

Created on: April 05, 2010   Last Updated: April 07, 2010

Being a parent is no simple task! Tantrums, bedtime snuggles, watching Bob The Builder one hundred times, remembering to hide all those things you don't want the kids to see... who has time for themselves?!  Any living human being can be a parent, but it takes a special kind of someone to be a mom / dad. 

You need patience! You know all those parents you see in the shopping malls with their kids screaming at the top of their lungs for stuff the child has no use for? And do you remember thinking "Oh my gosh, my kids would never act that way!" Well, guess what.. it's bound to happen! Kids want things, and they want it now; whatever IT is. There's also other things you need patience for, like teaching them things. Kids come fully equipped to learn, eventually. They can soak up whatever they see happening around them, sometimes it takes one time other times it takes many times. Helping a kid learn their ABCs sometimes isn't as easy as it looks.

You need to offer children love every minute of every hour of the day. This doesn't mean once a minute you have to tell them you love them, but simply to show them in small gestures. Jimmy just wrote on the wall, and you feel like exploding! Rather than explode, take some breaths in... and go get Jimmy. Explain to him where he went wrong, be calm, firm, yet still offering a loving ear.

And you need lots of kisses, to cover all those boo-boos. It's inevitable, they will fall, they will get hurt, they' bang their heads, they'll play with things they shouldn't have, then they'll cry because it hurts and want you to kiss them all better. You have magic lips! Use them!

Of course, you need the necessities in life. Food in their bellies, clothing on their backs, suitable living arrangements with heat, electricity, water, entertainment ...etc. Kids feel the need o buy all those new toys, but as you already know... they don't need that. No video game, transformer, Barbie house Or My Little Pony could ever replace the feeling mommy or daddy gives them when they pay a bit of attention to them. Without this attention, children will be no longer able to learn, they will act up and do things they know they shouldn't, because bad attention is better than no attention at all.

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