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!
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.
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…
There are a lot of posts going around from shell-shocked, well-meaning parents, discussing ways to talk to our kids about the fact that Donald Trump was elected President. (This is a good one.) There’s much to unpack: how he won, why he won, what this means for the future of our country, what it means about the present of our country, etc.
I have no answers to any of that (except the last one: there are a lot of ignorant and/or racist and/or misogynistic and/or short-sighted people in America). My oldest is only six years old, and while Detective Munch may not know much about politics or elections, he knows a bully when he sees one. He knows Trump is a mean, angry name-caller, even without the “benefit” of understanding the constant bigotry, misogyny, and xenophobia that comes out his mouth.
What he doesn’t know is why the country would elect someone like Donald Trump to lead it. And neither do I. So I’m not going to bother trying.
Read more about How to Distract Kids From “President Donald Trump” …