Raising Them, Raising Me

My kids are watching me grow up too.

That's probably the strangest part of becoming a parent. You spend your whole childhood assuming that one day you'll become a grown-up with all the answers. Then you have children of your own and realise you're still trying to answer the same questions.

Raising Them, Raising Me is about both journeys happening at the same time.

It's about teaching my son that love isn't always the person who gives you chocolate. Sometimes love is the person insisting you brush your teeth, setting boundaries, saying no, or making the hard decision that you'll hate today but thank them for years from now.

It's about raising children who are anxious when you never were. Watching your child become the "weird kid" when you remember exactly what it felt like to be the weird kid yourself. Fighting for them at school. Learning when to protect them, when to push them, and when to simply sit beside them while they figure it out.

It's about parenting with ADHD, untangling trauma, and realising that becoming a parent forces you to revisit your own childhood. Sometimes that means finding compassion for your parents because you finally understand just how impossible this job can be. Sometimes it means recognising that some choices really did leave scars, and that understanding them doesn't erase them.

My mum died over fifteen years ago. Some conversations I'll never get to have. Some forgiveness may never arrive in the way I imagined. So what do you do with the lessons you never learnt? How do you break cycles you didn't create? How do you become the parent you needed when nobody showed you how?

These are the questions I keep coming back to.

Because maybe there isn't a grown-up in this house after all.

Maybe we're just a family of humans, growing up together.