I love my kids, I just hate parenting
When you’re a kid, all you want for Christmas, or Hanukkah, or your birthday, are toys. All kinds of toys. Board games, action figures, lightsabers, it barely matters. They’re fun, and they make you happy.
When you’re parent, those same toys become a major source of irritation. They clutter your home, they empty your wallet, they give you a headache…
If you’re lucky.
Teaching your kids to be kind is a big deal. I don’t much care what my son becomes, whether he’s rich or poor, athletic or musical or bookish, a ladies man or a guy’s guy, so long as he ends up being a good person. Being kind to other people is a large part of that.
I was hopeful that the new KIND Snacks #kindawesome campaign – which asks people to spread kindness by handing out actual physical (or digital) cards that contain a code for redeeming free KIND bars – would be a fun way to teach my son this major life lesson. So I decided to use the cards they sent me to reward him every time I saw him do something nice.
More than a week later, I still have all my cards. Because five-year-old.
My wife loves when our son sleeps in our bed.
It’s tight, he inevitably chooses some weird, awkward position that usually involves one of his feet in her face or my crotch, but she loves it. Even when his presence makes any actual sleep totally impossible and leaves her completely exhausted the next day.
If I’m being honest, I love it too. Because I know it’s not going to last.
Sometimes watching sports and being a (good) parent is a tough combination. Especially when you’re a Dolphins fan.
I don’t have much to cheer for these days, but I do have plenty to cheer against (primarily the Patriots, Jets, and Bills). Unfortunately, there’s a five-year-old around most of the time, which makes talking smack about my rivals a lot harder.
But I think I may have found a solution. Thank God Detective Munch can’t read!
I can’t pretend (despite the fact that I sometimes do pretend) to know the first thing about how to properly raise your kids. But there are a few obvious dos and don’ts:
There’s one thing that should have its own category, though.
Ignoring your kids is not advisable. Except when it is. And then it’s glorious. Because ignoring is bliss.