When someone tells you they don’t like you, it stings.  No body likes to not be liked.  I get upset by it because I always feel like I go out of my way to be liked, to do as much as I can for everyone.  The Big Man says, I always take things too personally..

 

If I take his advice and not take it personally, then I do then realise that the ‘not liking me’ isn’t really the real reason behind the not liking, it is usually a front or the tip of the ice berg for something else, in most cases, not related to me at all.  I just happened to be or say the wrong thing at the wrong time.

 

The people who tell me they don’t like me the most are my little boys.  In fact, tonight, one of them hated me and told me I was the worst mother EVER.

 

Tonight’s ‘I don’t like you’ still stung, because I love them so much and hearing those words make me sad.  But tonight, I know it is because they are both super duper tired from so much rugby today, compounded with the fact that it is nearly half term,  that as I asked them to turn off the tv and go up to bed, I shocked them out of their sleepy slumber on the sofa.

 

The only way to cancel out the dislike is to reflect back with affection and calm.  So as I bundle and chivvy them up to bed, they still prickle and bristle, but I tousle their hair and tickle their little tummies and smother them with kisses to make them giggle…. And they soften, their arms circle my neck and both whisper ‘I’m sorry, Mummy, I like you really’… as they close their eyes and drift off to sleep.

 

I wish it were that simple with bigger people too.