‘I love you, Mummy, more than anything in the world,’ my seven year old son says to me almost every day.
‘I love you more, sweetheart,’ I reply, each time.
‘No you don’t. I love you way more,’ he comes back.
‘Trust me, darling. I love you in a way that you will never understand. When you have your own children, one day, you will understand.’
‘Impossible, Mummy. I love you so much more than you love me,’ he says proudly, every single time.

The truth is, I felt the same way when I was his age. I could never understand why my mother ever left her parents. Why had she chosen to leave them and live with me, my siblings and our father? She was crazy, in my opinion. Why would anyone leave their parents? I distinctly remember my mum telling me that I would, one day, feel differently. She was right, of course, and here I am now, more than thirty years later, in the same position that she was.

So, how do I convince my child that I really do love him more than he loves me? (FYI, he has a three year old brother who professes his love to me daily, but he hasn’t yet arrived at that stage of arguing about who loves whom more – he’ll argue about other things, but not this). Perhaps I don’t need to convince him. He does know that I love him, that I care about him and his brother, and that I will look after him, without exceptions. These things are a given. I am their mother and I not only know that I should do these things, but I want and ‘feel’ to do these things. Somehow, our children ‘feel’ this complete protection as well. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if my son thinks he loves me more. He is totally happy with the amount of love, he believes, I have for him. In fact, it’s rather sweet that he has the need to prove to me that he loves me more.

Which brings me to how I feel about my mother now, as an adult. Do I need to prove to her the depth of my love? No. I think that my actions towards her show her my love. I think that my actions towards my children and the fact that I mimic the way she brought us up also demonstrate the depth of my love and respect for her. I am fully aware that she loves me more than I love her. She has to – I am her daughter. However, what I hope is true is that my appreciation for her supersedes hers for me, because it should.

My mother has sacrificed so much of her time for me. She has cried over me and my well-being far more than I have cried over hers. She has, since I was in utero, taken care of me, worried about me and thought about every possible outcome to every scenario of my life. She has cleaned up my mess, emotional and otherwise, countless times. She has sat for days and weeks in hospital with me, managed my medical problems and attended pretty much every one of my doctor appointments, despite the fact that I am a grown-ass forty year old woman! Yes, you read correctly: I am forty, I am an independent woman and she is still doing those things for me. In her eyes, I am still her baby and I need her. In my eyes, I still need her because she is my mother.