I love my kids, I just hate parenting
Isn’t bullying supposed to be over?
Lately, ending the scourge of the schoolyard bully has become a popular cause. With the social media age bringing a new style of bullying to schools – and far scarier consequences with it – parents are on high alert. As a relatively new dad in a relatively progressive area, I hardly expected to encounter it.
Especially not in first grade!
Over the weekend, while I was giving my son a bath, we started talking about Disney’s Robin Hood. My son said he liked it — except for the ending, when the main characters kiss and get married.
“Ya know, you might want to get married someday…”
“I might want to marry a boy.”
“You can do that.”
“Boys can marry boys, and girls can marry girls.”
“That’s right. The important thing is that you marry someone you love.”
(I’ll stop quoting our conversation there, before he expressed his desire to marry Mommy and also to marry multiple friends from his kindergarten class.)
The conversation got me thinking…
Despite appearances, I love my kids.
Two months ago, Detective Munch turned six, and to mark the occasion I shared (on FB) one of the sappiest things I’ve ever written, a top ten list of reasons I love him. The reasons included his face, his laugh, his voice, and his love of music. I wrote the post when he was two, and I still love my son, and always will.
But right now, I don’t like my son.
As a man who has never assaulted a woman, I have little to do in this moment except to listen.
As a father to two young sons, I have a lot to do.
I must raise boys who will be part of the solution, instead of part of the problem.
Read more about We Must Raise Our Boys To Defy Rape Culture …
My six-year-old is a lot like me and not just in the typical ways all kids are like their parents.
After spending so much time around Mom and Buried and me and observing our behavior, he’s definitely picked up a lot of phrases and mannerisms – from both of us. But, in the same way he’s inherited my face, it seems pretty clear that Detective Munch has also straight-up downloaded my personality.
And that really sucks. I feel like I need to apologize to him.