I love my kids, I just hate parenting
No kid likes going to bed.
My 6-year-old could be in the middle of getting waterboarded and he’d rather stick that out than have to brush his teeth and go to his room. As such, he’s become a master at putting it off, and at turning every bedtime into a battle.
Every night, when bedtime approaches, he suddenly becomes possessed with the need to do things. Anything. EVERYTHING.
Unfortunately, this includes making Daddy angry.
We’re only three days into the new year, and if you’re anything like me, you’ve already broken your resolutions. Of course, if you’re exactly like me, you never bothered making any resolutions in the first place because ew.
I’ve never found them helpful, personally, but I do wish I could get Detective Munch to make a few. Despite my best parenting efforts, there are some things he still needs to commit to that would improve quality of life for both of us in 2017!
You’re not gonna believe this, but I went ahead and made a list of them.
Read more about The New Year’s Resolutions Every Parent Wishes Their Kid Made …
Parents and children have different perspectives.
This is obvious when you’re a kid, particularly a teenager, because parents just don’t understand. But it becomes even more obvious, blindingly obvious, when you become a parent. Suddenly, parental guidance isn’t just a hassle, it’s your daily responsibility!
We usually don’t want the same things that our kids do. There is some overlap: we want them to be happy, to have fun, to be healthy, and they, presumably, want those things too. But we have different definitions of those things, and different methods for achieving them.
Which means that some of the things that make us good parents also make us bad ones, in our kids’ eyes.
My parents live in Connecticut, about two hours away. We often take a family road trip to visit for the weekend, especially in the summer, because they have a pool — and also because my six-year-old prefers Grandma to me.
My wife and I dread those trips. Not as much as we dreaded them when we lived ten hours away, but at least back then we only had the one kid to worry about. Sure, two hours is a lot shorter than ten, but that eight-hour difference is more than made up for by the nightmare that is a screaming baby in the backseat.
We had a family road trip or three over the long Thanksgiving weekend. And, thanks to the approach Mom and Buried and I take, we survived them all. You can too!
Kids will surprise you.
About two years ago, a casting director from David “The Wire” Simon’s new show accosted me and Detective Munch (as we were walking down our street) and asked if he would be willing to appear in a scene. One of their actors had gotten sick and they wanted to film my son as he pretended to sleep. Easy-peasy!
I was ecstatic. Finally, my kid was gonna be a star, and my golden ticket, and it was all going to start with an appearance in the next project by the creator of my favorite TV show of all time! And then my four-year-old started screaming. And screaming. And screaming. And the casting directed started backing away, and away, and away. Just like that, my hopes were dashed.
Along with any potential college fund for my selfish little dream killer.