I love my kids, I just hate parenting
It’s Halloween! Which seems like an appropriate time for a Zombie Post. In browsing my blog archives, I realized I have countless posts about how terrifying it is to be a parent and how scary the job of raising a human being is. The post I’m resurrecting today is about how frightening kids themselves canRead more about Zombie Post: Tiny Terror[…]
I try not to preach a lot, especially about parenting.
For one thing, I’m not qualified. For another, no one is. But sometimes something gets under my skin so deeply that I can’t let it go, and as my son’s third Halloween approaches – the first where he actively chose his own costume – I have to speak up.
Halloween has become an incredibly sexist holiday. TOWARDS BOYS.
Mom and Buried and I only have one kid. Which makes us worse than all those parents who have more than one. Truly. We’re worse parents AND worse people.
At least we’re still better than all those people out there with NO kids! Am I right?
The fact is, having one kid is so easy it’s a joke. It’s pretty much exactly like having zero kids, except you actually have the one kid. Thankfully, one kid barely even registers in your life.
I’m a stay-at-home dad but since I only have one kid I’m really just a stay-at-home guy. I basically sit on my ass at home all day. Sometimes, I forget my son is even there! I honestly don’t know where he is right now, but I’m sure he’s fine. He’s just one person. He can handle himself.
I don’t know why only children even have parents.
Read more about Hilarious Things to Say to Someone Who Only Has One Kid …
Trying times at the Buried household.
Even since the kid turned three, he’s been, to borrow a word usually reserved for younger ages, terrible. Mom and Buried is concerned that we’re doing something – or not doing something – to encourage – or not discourage – this behavior. I’m more apt to dismiss his latest paranormal activities as part and parcel with his development. Most kids are devil-spawn at this age.
So she frets and I rationalize:
“He’s a toddler!”
“He’s three years old!”
“It’s a phase!”
While I concede I’m not the perfect Dad (there’s only one perfect dad: Coach Taylor from “Friday Night Lights”) and that there are probably things we could be doing to curb his behavior, I think I’m right. He is a toddler. He is only three. It probably is a phase.
But what if it’s not?
Human beings suck. Especially parents. Having kids seems to bring out the worst in a lot of us. For example, when I had a kid I started making gross generalizations about huge swaths of people.
You know who doesn’t suck? Kids. I know, stop laughing; I hate them too. But hear me out.
Obviously, kids suck. They’re terrible. They’re loud and unruly and they don’t listen and they’re stupid and they’re exhausting and they smell. And that’s just MY kid. Don’t even get me started on other people’s.
But you know what else they are? Kind. Innocent. Without a judgmental bone in their bodies. And selfless.