My children are on social media, and I monitor all of their content diligently. The things they post, the content they create and the reposts they make all do my heart good. I sat down this morning after getting them all to school and went through their social media posts as I always do to check for new things. My youngest daughter and created a video with a collage of pictures of her and her friends and the background sound was the guy saying, "I know these will all be stories someday, and our pictures will become old photographs. We'll all become someone's mom or dad, but right now these moments are not stories. This is happening. I can see it" And it turned me into a ball bag of tears. They were happy tears mixed with a little sadness that my children are growing up so fast. But watching their posts and seeing all the great memories they will have when they grow up does my heart good. Knowing that my oldest daughter's biggest complaint is that she can't find a guy that doesn't smoke weed or do bad things as well as the fact that she has high standards because she knows she deserves nothing less than the best does my heart good. Knowing that my son has an amazing girlfriend that he is madly in love with, and his biggest complaint is not getting to see her more, does my heart good. And every one of them have numerous posts about me, their mom. Oh my God those are the highlights of my day. And this isn't just social media. This is them every day in person as well. Every day they get home from school, they walk in, and they come straight to me and hug me. I ask them how their day was, and they tell me everything. We have dinner and then my artist (my oldest daughter) will sit and sketch or write me a heartfelt letter or both. My son's will do everything in their power to make me laugh. My youngest daughter will ask to spend time together playing hangman or tic tac toe or family board games. Not to mention her creating her very own Marine Biology book with sketches and information she gathered about sea creatures all by herself for fun!! As I take all of it in, I realize I am not perfect by any means, but I am doing something right. They are all happy, healthy and love to be home. The exact opposite of me who hated being home, vehemently opposed having to go anywhere or do anything with my parents and hated school. When I was home, I was in fight of flight mode constantly. Watching them all sit and do their homework and then relax while doing things they enjoy means so much to me. I have had the bittersweet joy of witnessing the effects of bad parenting vs good parenting, safe environment vs no safety and the growth process with and without confidence. As unfortunate as it is, part of me feels like my trauma built me for my kids. It was and is the most painful things I have endured (other than losing my younger brother) and yet every bit of me built me to be the mom I am today. If you could go back in time and compare me and my brother as kids/teens to my children, you would see the difference as clear as night and day. There is nature and nurture. Nature is the belief that people's behavior and identity is dictated by their biological makeup. Nurture is the belief that those qualities are based around the emotional and physical environment that they grew up in. I am a firm believer that nurture is everything. I cannot remember who performed the study or where I read this, but someone did a study on mice. The put a group of mice in a cage with unclean water, unclean living environments, low accessibility to food and very cramped. They put the same number of mice in a very roomy clean cage with plenty of access to food and clean water. They left them there for a period of time and after that time was over, they did a test. The took the mice from the poor living conditions and released them into a maze. They walked and crawled all over each other, confused and fighting. They could not make it through the maze to the food no matter how hard they tried. The mice in the good living conditions made it through the maze with no delay. To further the study, I believe the article said they placed the mice from the poor conditions into the better cage with the better living conditions and placed the mice that had the good living conditions into the poorer situation. They allowed the same amount of time to pass as they did the first time, and again released them into the maze. The mice that were now in the poor living conditions that had already mastered this same maze couldn't do it. The same mice that couldn't do it before did it with no issues. This backs my belief that nurture makes a world of difference. Genetics goes so far, then comes love, attention, guidance and understanding.
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