The Facebook trend that we didn't see coming.

I was sick of whinging parents. And then social media brought me a little gift. 

A lot of my Facebook friends are parents, so most days I see at least one “my kids won’t sleep”, “just spent an hour fighting with Alyssa trying to get her to eat her dinner”, or “Ava is refusing to go to school”, type post.

On the flip-side, I am also bombarded with child selfies (wait, maybe that was my son) and babies taking their first-step videos.

I’m a parent, so I love keeping up with my friends’ kids and their lives but even I get over it sometimes. I got so down by constantly seeing ‘my life is hard’ posts and articles alongside absolute shameless bragging (yes, I too am guilty) that I wrote a status about needing a more positive but non-braggy approach to discussing parenting instead of plastering all our woes over social media.

Either someone is totally stalking my profile OR some other, not at all related, person coincidentally started the Three Grateful Days Facebook challenge.

During the challenge you spend 3 days naming 3 things you are grateful for and tag 3 people to do the same to keep the whole thing going. Yes, there’s a lot of threes involved.

At first I thought, ‘yep, great, another Facebook version of a chain letter’, then I actually started reading what my friends, most of whom are parents, started posting.

I smiled.

“I’m grateful for my beautiful family who always take care of me no matter what.”

“I’m grateful that my kids are happy and healthy little cuties.”

“I’m grateful that my children are so wonderful at bedtime and still enjoy a story.”

“I’m grateful for my gorgeous healthy children.”

“I’m grateful for family time and lots of cuddles with hubby and the kids.”

In all the posts I read, almost everyone had 2 things in common. They were grateful for family and grateful for life.

Simple. Beautiful. Happy.

Others mentioned sunsets and warm hugs (wait, no, that one is from Frozen).

Not one person mentioned their super sports-star child, their massive pay packet or their extravagant holiday.

Some posts brought me back to reality but still weren’t downhearted, depressing or braggy.

“Grateful and thankful that we are lucky enough to have relatively stress-free bed times with the kids and the only thing stopping me from going to bed early is Facebook.” (She’s right, how ironic…)

“Grateful for a long overdue uninterrupted sleep in…well it was almost a sleep in.”

Finally, we’d found a way to post about parenting without sounding melodramatic or boastful.

Parenting is hard. Life is hard. We all know that. But life is also pretty damn amazing too, and sometimes we need to remind ourselves of this.

Today, I’m grateful for these 3 things:

1. My family – who make me happy. Pure and simple.
2. My job – which has given me so many opportunities.
3. My life – living in a country where mid-winter still gives us 23°C days. Bliss.

Have you participated in the 3 Grateful Days Facebook challenge? What things are you grateful for?

Want more. Try this:

One little word that could change your parenting for ever.

The 5 parenting moments that never make it onto social media.