We Can’t Cancel Mother’s Day Mum!

I’m possibly in the minority with this but as always, I’m totally happy to agree to disagree!

The kids just couldn’t wait to show me their beautiful cards this morning, which they’d whizzed together at the speed of light: a 3D envelope with a flower and a tree (apparently on springs), a message written by our older boy but under a false name(!), and a card with a special automatic closing mechanism involving blu tac and a hand-drawn purple tulip!

It’s always lovely to be given things isn’t it but I worry about the kids feeling pressure to acknowledge the day when they’re older so I’ve really pushed for it to be as low key as possible.  I’ve tried to get them to not do anything at all but the kids would just explode if they couldn’t give me one of their special cards.  We can’t cancel Mother’s Day Mum!

When they’re young they love the whole idea don’t they?  They make cards for you at nursery or school, write lovely misspelt messages full of love and then they’re so bursting to give them to you they can hardly wait until ‘the big day’.  Sometimes they just can’t wait: an incredibly excited little face runs out of nursery, begs you to open their card, love every single detail of it and then seal it up again.  Then you have to pretend you know nothing about it until you open it again three days later.  I love all that.

Then the big day arrives and they give you even more absolutely gorgeous homemade cards that you want to keep forever, if only you can stop them from falling apart or from things coming unglued before you’ve got them up on the mantelpiece.

But I hope when they become adults they won’t feel the duty of having to send me a card or call me.  Yes it will always be so lovely to hear from them but I really hope it will be because they want to and not because they’re doing it out of duty.
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