So it's that time of the year again. The most wonderful time of the year some call it. It's the time of year when we begin to see photos of Mom's leaping in the air for joy while their kids stand in a line with disgruntled looks on their faces sporting their backpacks. I do get the purpose. I promise I do. These photos are meant only to be funny and to poke at a truth that many Mom's feel deep down. I just wonder sometimes what the children in these photos are thinking.
Unless you have kids that can really really REALLY get a joke, then I kind of think the message that you are sending to your kids is: "Hey, I'm glad that you're going away. I don't want you here right now". I just don't really know how kids could not be receiving that message. If there is some other message that they are getting from this please let me know. I would be happy to be wrong.
I know I will probably get backlash on this. "Can't you take a joke?" " Our kids are made of heartier stuff than that!", something like that. And I promise that I am trying not to judge because I do get the whole Mom bonding sentiment that this is, I just wonder why we can't do it without our kids. Take a photo of yourself jumping sky high with your wine glass never spilling in front of a random school bus instead of in front of your kids. Take a party style snap chat with the front door of their school in the background. Anything but with the kids.
I try to think of it from the perspective of what would I think if someone shared this sentiment about me, and in front of me. Like if I was leaving the cottage and my parents were staying. If they came outside with the streamers and starting jumping around and whooping as we pulled away I would feel hurt. I would think they didn't want me.
What makes these little people any less human? I've talked with parents in the past who have said (right in front of their kids) how excited they are to get them out of the house and back at school and since that person's back was to their kids, they didn't see how the child who heard them deflated. But I did. And I won't forget. Ever.
That's why you will never see me in one of those backpack and sidekick jumping photos. I will not make my kids feel that I don't want them. Sure it's easier when they are back at school in some ways, no one denies that. Yes the back to school Mom photos we see online are very creative and quite funny, no one denies that. But the general sentiment is "I don't want you right now and I'm glad you will be gone 5 days our of 7". I don't think that's something anyone should have to hear, let alone a child who may not be able to process it in terms of what it actually is really supposed to represent. So let's put our kids feelings before our need for that joking connectedness with other Mom's. There's lots of other ways to get that, but once you've planted an idea in a child it's hard to get rid of. So so hard.