Although throughout the world this day varies in dates and traditions, the ultimate practice is to celebrate togetherness, awareness amongst children worldwide and improving children’s welfare.

This is to ensure that children can grow into happy health adults.

 “While we try to teach our children all about life, children teach us what life is all about”.

– Angela Scwindt

Children are THE greatest gift and most treasured passions on earth.

Children are innocent and it is up to us as parents/guardians to promote and grow their individuality.

There are no barriers, yes there are obstacles if you have children with extra special care needs but we as adults have the ability and the strength to overcome these for their sakes and give them the best out of this world.

“What is a home without children – Quiet” – Henny Youngman

We all know the feeling of the house when the children are absent, be it that they are at school or with parents so we can have that much anticipated rest.

We all know that within a short while the house feels empty, shallow and just not quite right.  We start to clock watch and wonder about what they are doing and how they are enjoying themselves.

My son went on his first residential trip in March for 2 nights and my house was not a home because he was absent.

“We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today”           – Stacia Tauscher

This quote particularly made me think and saddened me slightly.

As a SEN mum I find myself always worrying about what my son will achieve one day, about how he will cope with the next school year and then the transition to high school – puberty &ndndash; adulthood!

And I am guilty of almost dismissing what we are achieving in the now, the milestones he gets through every single day that he’s growing before my eyes.

“You can learn many things from children.  How much patience you have for instance”

– Franklin P Jones

How many times have you thought or even lashed out that you are at the end of your tether, that you have had enough and can’t take much more of this.

Children are full of mischief and it is this quality that is endearing but also shows that they are learning and growing into their own mini characters………. or carbon copies of ourselves.

Their biggest lesson to us is that of patience because once they are in bed and the house is calm, we forget everything ready to do it all the next day.

Lastly………….

“Children are like wet cement.  Whatever falls on them makes an impression” – Dr Haim Ginott

There is so much truth in this quote, children are like sponges and they soak up all the information around them be it good or bad so it is again our hardest challenge that the impressions we make are the best to mould them into decent human beings – our future generation that we can be proud of.

Some don’t, they are thrown into parenthood by circumstance and try and make the best of the situation.

Some people can’t become parents to their own children and endure the hardest of journeys through IVF or adoption to become parents.

Some families lose parents and essentially older siblings become parents to their younger ones.

Some parents are single parents, doing the hardest job of all pulling double shifts to be both mum & dad.

Everyone’s journey into parenthood is unique; no two families are the same.

What we ALL have in common though is our journey, albeit that we all may take different paths to get there.

Our road was a bit bumpy for a while.

Within the role of a parent we suddenly obtain a whole new skill set or feathers in our caps.  We become:

– Teachers

– Entertainers

– First-Aiders

– Protectors

– Mediators

– Motivators

It is the most difficult yet most rewarding title you will ever have.

Yes we know that we have to provide the basic yet essentials like food, clothes, nurture and support.

Yet we have so much more to do in making their environment safe, make them aware of dangers, the difference between right and wrong.

It is our role to protect them from dangers to which they may be unaware or vulnerable too, especially where our children have additional needs.

We have to help them acquire emotional wellbeing – to praise, give affection in order to build healthy emotions.

To try and eliminate negative factors that they will inevitably encounter of sarcasm or bullying.

My son has autism; as if all of the above that I know I have to do wasn’t hard enough, I had the added difficulty that part of his condition meant that he could not fully understand many of the emotions that I was trying to teach.

Yes he understood the basics early on of happy/sad but try teaching the emotion of embarrassment or confusion!!

The thing is there is no guide, no manual or “parenting for dummies” guide – well there are a plethora of them that you can access in book stores or on your kindle but I mean it in the sense of “no one person’s way is the right way!

We can only make our way through life doing the absolute best and morally correct things we can for our children; yes we will ALL make mistakes, multiple mistakes and sometimes we will make the same mistakes but we will learn and evolve.

We get to celebrate mother’s day and father’s day to show the mums and dads how much they mean to their children, but I love the idea of a global day to celebrate parents.

A day where we can all give a little nod to the person next to us with the child having a meltdown that shows “we feel your pain, we salute you, this is not easy – we know you’re doing your best”!