Growing up, I thought life was always roses for my family. Anything I asked for, I would get. I would not say I was a spoilt kid because I didn’t always get what I wanted and this was not because I couldn’t get it, I believe it was because my parents wanted me to appreciate what I had and also learn that we don’t always get what we want in life. Moreover, some of the things I wanted were unnecessary.
Those days, I didn’t have younger siblings and so the burden on my parents wasn’t much until I started having younger siblings which came with extra burden on them. Regardless, I still thought life was okay because we ate 3 times a day, our fees was payed on time and we didn’t lack anything. At that time, I was still in primary school and I didn’t understand fully the hardships of life. Mine was to go to school, come home and sleep.
But, as I grew older, no one needed to tell me there were problems at home. Being an overly hyper independent individual , I started to do petty petty things for myself at around primary school. I would save my allowance just to get what I wanted because I knew my parents were already doing their best for me. At around junior high school, I instantly knew when things were not going well at home, be it financially or other family issues.
Knowing my parents, they are not ones to burden us kids about petty stuff so with anything happening, they’d prefer to handle it on their own without it affecting we the kids at home but with time, they started to open up to us as we were getting mature at that stage. Sometimes, we would have a family meeting to discuss the issue at hand and see the way forward and other times, it would just be we the older kids with our parents. This move , I believe helped my siblings and I learn how to handle challenges we face on the daily basis.
Soon enough, I moved away to the university and at some point, I found out some stuff happening at home were being kept away from me. I would only find out after everything has been sorted out which I wasn’t happy about. But, looking at it from a parent’s perspective, I came to understand that they didn’t want the issues at home to affect my academics. Sometimes, they would even warn my sister not to call me just to allow me study well. To some extent, I think it was a good move because being an over-thinker, I worry a lot about things I can’t even control which would eventually affect my studies.
But gradually, I started to engage more with them so I could help handle some of these. Now, I don’t even need to call to know what’s happening, they call me to talk it out in order to come up with the best ways to handle the situation at hand. Even though I’m away from home at the moment, I’m able to help my family in my own little way and now that my siblings are also older, most stuff are not hidden from us.
With this experience of mine, I believe opening up to your kids about issues at home is in stages. As they grow, you as the parent should know your kid and know the kind of stuff to discuss with them as it also helps in developing their problem solving mindset.
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