I love my kids, I just hate parenting
I came across this image – Flyer? E-vite? Sign posted at the gates of Hell? – on Facebook a few weeks ago, and while I wanted to write about it immediately, I was too possessed with confusion and rage to put my words together.
Thankfully, my confusion has subsided.
BUT MY RAGE HAS NOT!
I don’t care what people think of my parenting.
Let me clarify: I don’t care what people who aren’t in my family think of my parenting.
I appreciate everyone who reads my stuff, even the humorless prigs who think I’m the Worst Father On Earth because I make jokes online, but I am well aware that none of you see the full picture of my parenting. Your judgment, positive and negative, is both incomplete and invalid. You see what I want you to see.
That said, there’s one reaction I can’t stomach. And it’s not the one you think.
There are a lot of reasons a parent might want to lighten their load with a little help from their friends, whether said friends be alcohol, marijuana, Xanax, or boarding school. You have kids. You get it. Sometimes you need to relieve some stress. Parenting on drugs is tempting, to say the least.
I haven’t sent my kids away (yet), and I’ve never been much of a pill guy (there but for the grace of God and all). So these days I mostly drink. Kids have a tendency to make that necessary. You’re on Facebook. You get it.
There was a time — way back in college — when I might have done a little more than drink. Lately, now that the stigma is gone and the criminality is going away as well, I’m wondering if it might be time to explore a return to Honalee with everyone’s favorite magic dragon.
Parenting advice is tricky.
Getting it from strangers is seldom welcome, getting it from non-parents is never welcome, and getting it from me is a laugh riot!
Unsolicited parenting advice, of course, is almost always unwanted, and if that advice is also useless? Don’t bother.
If you have kids and you haven’t gone gray yet, either stop lying or just give it time.
There are days I can practically feel my hair changing color as it’s happening. Which is usually when my 6-year-old is throwing a fit about having to go to bed/having to go to school/having to take a bath/having to eat dinner/having to do his homework/etc.
Going gray is a part of getting older, and a part of parenting, and I’m okay with it. I’m not vain. Besides, a little salt and pepper worked out great for George Clooney and I’m nothing if not exactly like George Clooney!