I love my kids, I just hate parenting
In a lot of ways, kids make Halloween more fun. But, like everything else, they also make it much, much worse.
For example, last night, as part of our month of scary movies, instead of watching something legit like Let The Right One In (the original FTW!) or The Conjuring, we watched Hocus Pocus. (Which was much scarier, for totally unintentional reasons.)
Because parenting.
The primary challenges I face in raising my almost-7-year-old can be broken down into two major categories:
Confession: I can’t always recognize the things he does because he’s a normal kid!
My wife and I have an ongoing disagreement. (Well, we have several, one of which is about whether Moulin Rouge is a good movie (it is not), but this one is about parenting.)
She thinks I yell too much. And I know I said this was a disagreement, but I don’t deny that she’s right. I do yell too much, especially lately.
Instead of losing my temper, I need to actually lose my temper.
Every night at dinner (well, we try to do it every night), the family goes around the table and run through our “peaks and pits.” (Except The Hammer. He mostly screams.)
We each share the best part and worst parts of our day. It’s mostly a ploy to get our 6-year-old to talk to us, but it’s become an interesting exercise for Mom and Buried and I as well. I’ve learned that no matter how well or how poorly my day went at work, or with my fantasy team, or even with my wife, it’s almost always the interactions with my kids that make up the best and worst moments of my day.
It’s kind of astonishing how your children are so frequently responsible for both your highest highs and lowest lows.
Being a parent is scary, mostly because children are terrifying, and not just in that nightmarish “standing silently next to your bed in the middle of the night” kind of way…
All sorts of crazy, unpredictable, and unbelievable things happen when you have kids in your life. (You know what they say: Parenting is like a box of chocolates, NOT ALL OF THAT IS CHOCOLATE OMG DON’T EAT IT!)
Not all of it makes sense.