You know what it's like when you have one of those 'what is the point, all my efforts are unappreciated' type days.
and when it's one of your own offspring who are dealing out the blows, it can really bring a mother down!
Eldest daughter is now mixing with 'the girls that have' (seemingly everything, if you ask me) and it is causing major unrest back at the farm, on the parent front. Not just the 'why can't I have...?' scenario, which is easily dealt with - but more like an interrogation into mortgages, land rents, and business revenues, along with, "why do we do what we do? " "why don't I (meaning me) get a job?" "why don't we sell this or that..?" etc... etc...
All these questions, are answered appropriately to daughter's age, but in an honest and open way. Maybe they are a bit too close to home for comfort, and that's why it's all feeling like salt in a wound.
I can't deny - these are all questions I have asked myself, many times, and there will be plenty of other farming mums out there, who have spent sleepless nights trying to find their own answers. And sometimes the answers change, depending on the personal crisis you are facing at the time! What you don't expect, is your own pre-teen child, to be the one kicking you in the teeth.
Or maybe that's me being unrealistic. Together with Henry, I have made a lifestyle choice, and by implication, that choice is made on behalf of our children too. Generally speaking, children do not experience anything other than the world parents create for them in the home and through family life, whatever that entails. Until, that is, they being to spread their wings and see what else is around them. They see another way.
Indeed, throughout their lives they will see a myriad of 'other ways', hopefully managing to pick a way through for themselves.
...and let's face it, when did children ever want the same things from life as their parents? ...it would just make for an easier life right now, if all three of our children at Dove Farm could enjoy, or at least quietly endure, their 'childhood lot' for a little while longer?
All we can do, as parents, is stand firmly by our choices. For me and Henry at least, our choices are made in an attempt to achieve goals of our own, as well as share values with our children. We hope these values will be 'keystones' for them to lean upon at some future time.
I can't help smiling whenever I watch one of those 'change your life completely' type programmes on the TV: where the professional city parents, sell up and buy a derelict barn in the middle of nowhere - sometimes in the middle of nowhere, in a different country, with not much to live off, except a bit of home-made pottery, a veg patch and a goat. Camera pans out to sun-kissed children, running bare-foot through a meadow, and we the viewers, are invited to sigh longingly.
I sigh too, but I'm actually wondering what those same children will be saying as they grow older and reach longingly, with arms outstretched, for the disposable income and consumerist dream that their parents have so valiantly taken them away from.
Our daughter has to learn patience until the time when she can get out there and live her own life. We as parents, will have to take comfort in being her 'safe haven' for whenever she needs it, because no matter how corny the cliche, it remains true to say that you can never buy the things that really matter.
For more on Dove Farm, visit our website www.dovefarm.co.uk
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