I love my kids, I just hate parenting
It’s rare to find a parent who didn’t measure the passage of time by juxtaposing pictures of their kid’s first day of school in September with their kid’s last day of school in June.
And then, with a mixture of pride (“He did it!”) and petulance (“He’s growing up too fast!”), they bemoan the passage of time, whine about how fast it’s all going, and bitch about how quickly kids grow up.
I call bullshit.
These days, parents have it easy. Stop laughing. I just mean we have it easy when it comes to introducing our kids to our favorite shows and movies.
I don’t have a lot to pass down to my son. There’s my sense of humor, my inexplicable collection of Garfield books (the same seven jokes reprinted over and over for 40 years = PRICELESS), and a complete and utter inability to build or fix things.
But I do have opinions, and many of them center around pop culture: Superman is better than Batman; Die Hard is the best action movie ever made; “The Wire” is required watching; Han shot first; etc., etc.
You better believe I’ll be passing those down.
Sometimes it’s hard to believe how quickly your kid is growing up.
Detective Munch has his last day of preschool today (he can have the ceremony, he can get the diploma, but I’ll be dead in the cold cold ground before I refer to it as graduation!) In September he’ll start Kindergarten, and he can already hold actual conversations and ride a bike and dress himself and brush his own teeth (each with varying degrees of success, but with enough general success that I’m counting them all). He’s still far from being a young man, or even truly independent in any way, but he’s definitely getting there.
At least I thought he was, until I watched him play tee-ball. Because guess what? Turns out there may be no crying in baseball, but there’s plenty in tee-ball.
Disciplining your children can be hard. But with the right attitude, disciplining your children can be a laugh riot!
I love putting my son in time-out, not letting him stay up any later, taking things away from him. Not food or shelter or love (I’m an asshole, not a psychopath!), but toys, and TV, and the other little perks of childhood. I don’t do it to instill values or help make him appreciate what he already has. I don’t even do it because he’s so spoiled already that it serves as a nice change of pace.
While those benefits are all well and good, I like depriving my son of the things he wants because it’s funny and it makes me feel better.
“If you want the unvarnished truth, ask a child.”
So the saying goes, and it’s true. In fact, you don’t even have to bother asking. A child will come up to you, unprompted, and lay you bare in an instant, without a second thought, without even bothering to look back at the mound of ash left in his wake.
Why is honesty a virtue again? I don’t want my kid to be a liar, but a little bit of tact wouldn’t kill anybody. (Especially me. I’m really fragile right now.)