I love my kids, I just hate parenting
Kids are strange.
Even my own son, whom everyone thinks is my spitting image and whom you’d assume shares some of my personality traits and interests, is alien to me in many ways.
He’s a lot like me, and also a lot like who tf knows.
In certain situations, say, a dinner party, or a funeral, conventional wisdom holds that some subject matter is off-limits. Some topics are just a tad more provocative than others and have a tendency to cause unnecessary tension when broached.
It’s better for everyone if typically contentious or potentially divisive topics are avoided, such as: politics; religion; a fondness for the Yankees; an appreciation for the Red Hot Chili Peppers; money.
There are no guarantees those topics will raise any hackles with your specific company, but they are more likely to than others. So it’s usually best to stay away.
The same holds true when you’re in the company of toddlers.
And so it begins.
To be honest, it probably should’ve started already, but Dad and Buried has been a little pee-shy, as in: I don’t want to help my son pee. I’ve been dreading this whole stage in my son’s development. Not because it signifies him getting older, but because I’m clueless. And it signifies him getting more inconvenient.
Now, with summer approaching, and a new preschool looming in the fall, it’s time: my son needs to be potty trained.
As the stay-at-home parent, it trickles down to me to fulfill this duty.
Every adult asks the children they know the same thing: “what do you want to be when you grow up?”
Depending on the age of the kid, the answers usually vary from adorable to delusional. I’m almost 40 and I still don’t know! If a grown adult with actual agency and control over his life can’t be certain of where it’s going to lead – no matter how certain one may be of where s/he wants it to go – how can a young kid’s parents?
There’s an art to putting things off.
When you are trying to avoid doing something you don’t want to do, you find other ways to fill your time. Hopefully other, better ways.
For example, my wife often says “I have a headache.” Not only can I neither confirm nor deny the presence of an ache in her head, making it the perfect excuse, she gets to go to sleep. And when you have a toddler, nothing is better than sleep.
When you are a toddler and you are trying to put off doing something you don’t want to do, you are in a pickle. Because not only do you have just about zero independence, thus limiting your ability to find alternative uses for your time, you’re also stupid.