I love my kids, I just hate parenting
It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times, it’s bedtime. You’ve done it, you’ve survived another day of parenting, and your reward – a few hours of adult TV, a glass of wine or beer, and a little blissful silence – is just around the corner. But first, you have one more challenge:Read more about Bedtime is Hell[…]
Children will never admit to being tired.
They’ll shake their heads while they’re yawning if they think it will buy them five more minutes of doing whatever stupid bullshit they’re doing. My son hates going to bed more than I hate trying to put my son to bed!
They simply don’t know what’s best for them. So it’s up to us to decide.
I spend a lot of time making HILARIOUS lists comparing things.
Comparing the ways parenting is similar to different, HILARIOUSLY unexpected things, like being in jail, or like being bullied, or like writing lists about how parenting is similar to different, HILARIOUSLY unexpected things.
I even write HILARIOUS lists comparing the ways kids are similar to different, HILARIOUSLY unexpected things, like supervillains, and politicians.
But the pure, unadulterated, non-HILARIOUS truth is that parenting is a unique endeavor, and that kids are actually quite different from most things, not similar to them. Because they are singular, alien beings that don’t behave the same way as we do.
The perfect example of this? Bedtime.
There’s an art to putting things off.
When you are trying to avoid doing something you don’t want to do, you find other ways to fill your time. Hopefully other, better ways.
For example, my wife often says “I have a headache.” Not only can I neither confirm nor deny the presence of an ache in her head, making it the perfect excuse, she gets to go to sleep. And when you have a toddler, nothing is better than sleep.
When you are a toddler and you are trying to put off doing something you don’t want to do, you are in a pickle. Because not only do you have just about zero independence, thus limiting your ability to find alternative uses for your time, you’re also stupid.