As corny and cliche as it sounds, parents do not get the praise and appreciation they deserve on a daily basis. I mean come on, our moms carried us through nine months of agony and pain only to have us come out screaming and our dads had to deal with sassy little girls and daddy's boys. Our parents endure hardships from the day we are conceived to the day we die, even when we move out.

To the single parents/divorced parents, you guys go through so much and overcome major struggles. Not to say that parents who are together do not struggle with parenting but it is a different kind of struggle. Single parents do not have a spouse to rely on for extra help and even though most of them have help from members, it isn't quite the same. Most separated parents can co-parent pretty well and are able to compromise through certain obstacles with the child but some separated parents cannot co-parent and there ends up being different parenting styles which is not a bad thing but in separate houses can be destructive. Being separated parents cannot be an easy job but it is important to co-parent and work together as much as possible.

To every parent, thank you. No one is perfect but that does not mean we don't try. Parenting has a lot of ups and downs and no one really knows how their child is going to turn out. Even the best of parents can raise a hellion and parents who struggle a lot can have a child who never breaks the rules. Being a parent is something most of us wish we could be one day and a lot of us owe our own parents for that.

I know that I want to be a parent like my own parents because they are amazing. They have worked so hard for the past eighteen years of my life to give me everything I could possibly need to eventually be out on my own. After all, that is sort of the goal of parenting right? To make sure your children have every tool they need to be a successful human being out in the real world.

So, to all the parents who have experienced all the love and all the frustration us kids thank you. We thank you for putting up with our nonsense and dealing with our bad attitudes in our teenage years. We thank you for being put through the ringer just to make sure we are okay sometimes. We thank you for always being there to lend a helping hand and getting us out of trouble when we should have never been in that situation in the first place. We thank you for being incredible, kind, loving, compassionate humans who chose one of the hardest jobs in the world. Being a parent is a lifelong commitment and we are all grateful that you chose this job.

We love you!