I love my kids, I just hate parenting
Father’s Day is coming up (as if you didn’t know, you sly minx!) and Mom and Buried keeps asking me what I want. I keep telling her that I don’t want any Father’s Day gifts.
Which is true, I don’t want anything. Why not? Well, it’s certainly not because “I have two beautiful kids and an amazing wife and that’s everything I need” because give me a break!
Here are some reasons I don’t want any Father’s Day gifts.
Parents aren’t special. Having children doesn’t make you a hero. To paraphrase Furious Styles, any fool can make a baby, it takes a real parent to raise kids.
It also takes a real parent to think horrifying thoughts about their kids. And if that’s the primary criterion by which parenting is measured, I’m pretty sure I’m the world’s greatest dad. Because I’m a horrible person!
For proof, witness this list of terrible thoughts only parents have, and that it’s possible only this parent has, because I’m deranged. But that’s why you love me!
It’s easy to compare the delightful, infuriating experience of having kids to different non-parenting things. I should know, I’ve done it a lot.
I’ve compared having kids to being in prison, going to an amusement park, playing fantasy football, watching a popular TV show, and other things I’ve forgotten about because I’m too prolific for my own good.
Obviously, you can compare parenting to just about anything. But what can’t you compare it to?
Let’s find out.
Recently, Detective Munch got in trouble at school.
He gets in trouble at school every once in a while, but it’s mostly with both the same frequency of trouble and of the same variety of “trouble” that most five-year-olds get into. He doesn’t pay attention to the teachers, he goofs around with his friends and acts silly, he put his fingers in someone else’s mouth. You know, typical behavior.
But last week he did something a little bit more serious, and in an attempt to let him know that such behavior is unacceptable, Mom and Buried and I were forced to lay down the law. Of course, there are only so many ways to discipline a five-year-old, and a lot of the time you end up wondering who’s being punished.
Discipline is a double-edged sword.
I guess I’m a party pooper. My son turned five in September, and as usual, my wife threw him an elaborate and expensive birthday party, complete with a theme, of course. Now that we have another kid to celebrate, the birthday party nightmare is only going to get worse.
When Detective Munch turned one, it was a circus theme. For two, it was Yo Gabba Gabba! At three, it was all about trains, and at four, he and his friends got capes and dressed as superheroes. This time around, it was a pirate-themed affair, complete with invitations that looked like—and were actually burned at the edges to look like—old treasure maps, a corresponding treasure hunt, and plastic swords and eye-patches for all the scurvy little dogs to take home and subsequently use to terrorize their parents.
It was fun. My son had fun, his friends had fun, everyone had fun. Even the adults! (We provided beer and mimosas because WE’RE NOT MONSTERS.) That doesn’t mean I want to do it again.