I love my kids, I just hate parenting
![[E-card] Bite Club](https://i0.wp.com/dadandburied.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/fight-club.jpg?resize=500%2C233&ssl=1)
The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. The first rule of Bite Club is you never stop talking about Bite Club.
Seriously, if someone bites you, scream bloody murder and alert everyone in your vicinity! Biting is NOT acceptable, even if you’re just a toddler.
Because I don’t care if you’re Batman: getting bit HURTS.
Last week, when I asked my Facebook followers for topic ideas, someone suggested I tackle the mixed feelings parents have when their kids misbehave. Which almost sounds crazy. Why would anyone have anything but bad feelings when their kids misbehave?
Then, earlier this week, I got yelled at by a bunch of people who got angry that I let my son run rampant on airplanes. Never mind that I don’t do that, and that my son has (thus far) been very well-behaved on airplanes; these people said HURTFUL things that MADE ME CRY.
And it got me reconsidering that reader’s request, especially since I suddenly and strongly want my kid to misbehave on our next flight, just out of spite.
As both a Miami Dolphins fan and a not-exactly-physically-imposing writer type, I am really torn on this whole bullying scandal.
Bullying is deplorable, and, despite being raised in an era (not all that long ago, really) when the default suggestion for dealing with bullies was to fight back and expose the bully as the coward he truly is, fighting fire with fire is no longer an acceptable tactic. But judging what goes on in a football locker rooms by the same standards with which we judge “the real world” is a little insane. I’m not defending Richie Incognito’s actions, but context is important, and I don’t think we have all of it. It’s impossible for non-football players to understand what it’s like in that environment, but I am relatively certain it’s less like your cubicle farm and more like The Hunger Games.
That said, I always find it obnoxious and condescending when someone tells me I can’t possibly know what something is like because I haven’t experienced it. And then I thought about parenting. And I realized most parents take the same attitude with non-parents, and it’s equally obnoxious and condescending.
But that doesn’t make it false. And the inability of outsiders to fully understand what the day-to-day is like is just one of the ways parenting a toddler is like being on the Miami Dolphins.
I wasn’t one of those people who used the phrase “we’re pregnant.” For one thing, that phrase diminishes the role the mother plays in childbirth, and considering that the mother’s role encompasses pretty much the whole enchilada, saying “we’re” seemed disingenuous and potentially insulting.
For another, saying it makes me feel like a douchebag.
Aside from including myself as a member of the Miami Dolphins (the 12th man!) or the Boston Red Sox (but I’ve never liked the “Red Sox Nation” thing), I’m not one to use “we” for much of anything. I’m a loner, Dottie. A rebel. But I do find myself invoking some mysterious, all-encompassing “we” when explaining something to my son.
I don’t know where “we” came from. And we don’t like it.
Children are mirrors.
When I concentrate really hard, I do this thing with my face where my features get scrunched up all tight. My wife blames this expression for my increasing wrinkles and constantly attempts to stop me from doing it (despite the fact that I can still pass for 18!) I see her point, and I’d love to stop creating crow’s feet. But it’s impossible; it’s genetic.
I’ve seen my father make the same face, for the same reasons, and now I’m waiting to see it on Detective Munch’s chubby little visage. He already looks a lot like me, and it’s so gratifying to see him take on some of my characteristics that I’m okay with adding the wrinkle-maker to that collection.
Unfortunately, it has yet to happen. But I have seen him reflect back aspects of myself that are not quite as amusing.