I love my kids, I just hate parenting
Sometimes I worry that I love my son too much.
I was thinking about that this Christmas, when I saw the haul of toys he received from his parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and watched as he was indoctrinated into the Culture of More. It definitely made for a fun holiday – the joy of little kids can be contagious – but it also made me nervous.
There’s a reason we call it “spoiling.” Overindulgence breeds assholes.
Parenting isn’t a competition.
When it comes to raising kids, comparing how you’re doing to other parents or measuring your kid’s development against others their age is just not a good idea. Children are like snowflakes – annoying, loud, inconvenient, smelly snowflakes. They’re all annoying and loud and inconvenient and smelly in their own unique ways.
Every parent is unique too. We all have different styles, even compared to our spouses. Making it about who’s winning is poisonous to your relationship and potentially damaging to your offspring.
That said, when it comes to which parent Detective Munch takes after, I am totally crushing my wife.
“Little kids are sponges.”
You hear it all the time, and it’s true. My son’s vocabulary increases every day, and most of what he’s learning he gets right from Mom and Dad, such as his first “curse” word, the relatively innocuous “dammit!” Needless to say, we’ve had to become a lot more careful about the words we use. It’s a bit of a pain.
But there’s a flip side to that coin. Sure, he parrots a lot of stuff we don’t even realize we’ve said around him, or don’t necessarily want him to be saying, but we can also train him to provide some entertainment. For example…
I’ve been here almost two weeks now, and as I prepare for my first official Thanksgiving as a North Carolinian, I’ve decided that even if I can’t be expected to totally embrace my new surroundings, I can at least do my best to help my son acclimate.
After all, there are certainly some lessons he could learn from his fellow (gulp) Southerners.
Like their kindness. Or at least their courtesy.
We finally (re-)elected a president, but the voting’s not over yet. I still need your help!
Blogger Idol carries on, and as one of the final 6, I need your votes more than ever.
This time around we had to write about a chance we didn’t take, a decision we made over the course of our lifetime that potentially altered its trajectory. I almost wrote about the blunder that was NOT switching to contact lenses earlier – I waited until after college; I could totally be married to Kate Beckinsale right now, dammit!
But since I’m already married to her non-celebrity equivalent, I chose something else.
Read more about Blogger Idol 2012 – Week 7: Je Ne Regrette Rien! …