I love my kids, I just hate parenting
I hate being a dad. Sometimes.
You know this; you’ve read my blog.
Hopefully, you’ve also understood my blog. And you know what “sometimes” means. And you understand that even when I hate being a dad, I still love it.
Not everyone understands my blog.
According to my son’s birth certificate, I became a father in 2010. But becoming an actual parent took longer. In fact, I think it took until last week.
When we imagine having kids, most of us have similar daydreams. Most of them focus on big moments: choosing a name, putting together a crib, going through labor, changing diapers, playing catch, taking off the training wheels, the first day of school, etc.
When I finally, actually became a dad, many of those milestones remained significant, but dozens – hundreds! – more piled up around small, everyday stuff. Every single first is a capital-F First: first burp, first smile, first poop, first solid poop, first roll-over, first sit-up, first crawl, first fall, first steps, first words…
But after a while, and folders full of pictures, you realize that those aren’t your milestones. They’re your kid’s. Here are some actual parenting milestones.
My son is developing at an incredible rate.
He’s getting taller, his hair is getting longer, his vocabulary is increasing. But even more impressively, he’s already picking up skills most of us don’t use until later in life. Skills like arguing, sarcasm, and, most frustratingly, negotiation.
At the young age of not-even-three, my innocent child is becoming a slick little deal-maker. It’s enough to make me sick proud.
On Friday, I wrote about how children absorb and reflect their parents’ behavior, often shining a light on Mommy and Daddy’s worst tendencies.
Some of those tendencies are more problematic than others, especially when my son starts doing unconscious impressions of his parents in public. Sometimes it’s cute, sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s just plain embarrassing.
Because Detective Munch does bad impressions of me, and I don’t mean bad in a “he can’t pull it off” kind of way. He’s a gifted mimic. It’s my behavior that’s the problem.
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.