I'm Proud Of You

I truly believe that the word " I am proud of you" is very underrated. It is a word that many of us truly need to hear from time to time. 

Usually when you tell someone that you have been trying so hard and finally achieved an accomplishment they will tell you something sarcastically  like " you wan't a cookie"???

We know how our friends are and sometimes they can be real stupid but there is 2 individuals and sometimes even 1 person and that is our parents to tell us how proud of us they really are.

I remember getting into an argument with my parents a couple years ago when I was attending college. There was a point in my life when I felt I needed a break from school and all they kept asking me was "when was I planning to register for school again and that it was really important for me to do so in order to be successful in life". I'm the kind of person to really hold things in and not express myself when I was mad but this time, the anger inside me just blew off and along with a lot of cuss words and in simpler words I asked these following questions…

• Why did you not tell me that you were proud of me when I would work full time and attend school full time?
• Why were you not proud of me that I stayed in all if not 98% of the weekends to finish up on h.w and would stay up endless nights doing so even on the weekdays?
• Why were you not proud of me that I was actually in college but once I'm not, you guys were all on my face about me attending again?

I didn't really gave them a chance to say anything and went straight to my room and laid  on my bed and started thinking about how wrong of me was to go off at them like that when they went through so much to get into this country so they could provide a better life for me. Not only that but both actually became citizens of this country. And never once did I tell them I was proud of them… 

In the end, it was my job and responsibility to go to school and try to make something out of myself. Sometimes we crave that "I am proud of you" but sometimes those words are meaningless if you are not proud of yourself. Truth is, people have their own problems and struggles and many of us don't receive that appreciation or praise we want when we accomplish something. 

But as parent's or future parents we need to realize what most of us went through as in being in gang infested communities to tell our children the following…

• I'm proud of you for not joining a gang.
• I'm proud of you for not coming home stupid drunk or high from parties.. ( well, sometimes we may have but most of our parents were sleeping,lol )
• I'm proud of you for graduating from high school and more importantly college.

As I said, people shouldn't rely on being told that they are something to be proud of …. but why risk it ? I would rather thank my future son for directly coming home from school and for him to know I am proud of him for doing so, because it would mean more if I told him that rather than in the contrary for him to immediately go after school and hang around with gangs and for them to tell my son that they are proud of him for killing a rival gang member.