I love my kids, I just hate parenting
It’s Super Bowl Sunday and I’m about to start cooking drinking. Is tomorrow a holiday yet because let’s be serious! For today’s Zombie post, I was planning to resurrect an old one about why, even though I love watching it, I probably won’t let my kid play organized football. And then I realized that wouldRead more about Zombie Post: Are You Ready for Some Football… Posts?[…]
Having kids changes your outlook on tons of things, some big, some small. For the most part, it’s positive. Life becomes better and more interesting, things you’ve long taken for granted are suddenly seen in a new light; that’s exciting and fun.
But kids are pretty stupid. And while their innocence can be refreshing, their ignorance is simply astounding. So for every aspect of life you appreciate anew when you view it through the eyes of your developing child, there are thirty mundane things that you had been ignoring on purpose that are suddenly thrust back into your life. Soon you find yourself focusing on things you’d stopped wasting time thinking about long ago.
Having children both expands and corrupts every aspect of your life. Kids change your perspective, and suddenly things that shouldn’t be important are, and things you used to enjoy without a second thought become minefields.
Lately I’ve been getting push-back on some of the content on my blog. Some people wish I would tone it down a bit.
Unfortunately for those people, I started this blog as an antidote to “toned-down”. I wanted it to be as honest as possible, and, failing that, to exaggerate in the opposite direction, away from “everything is amazing!” and towards “everything sucks!” I’d rather be prepared for the worst than disappointed when it happens, especially since the worst parts of parenthood don’t hold a candle to the best parts. So why sugarcoat stuff that doesn’t need sugar-coating?
But I get it. It makes you sad when I insult my son, even jokingly. You’re worried that this sweet little boy might stumble across my blog and “discover” that his father hates him.
I appreciate your concern, and I’ve decided to address it. I’m going to throw you a bone and write a sincere, heartfelt blog post – hyperbole-free! – to let you know the truth about what my parenting experience is really like.
The beginning of parenthood is boring. Not uneventful – lots of shit happens (literally) – but repetitive and monotonous.
It’s hard too, but mostly because it’s new, not because it’s particularly challenging. (Unless your baby has colic, in which case just drop him into a volcano and start over.) You’re tired all the time, you’re stressed all the time, you’re concerned about things you’d never thought about before, etc., but that stuff’s mostly just inconvenient (and being an adult).
Of course, when you’re a new parent, you don’t always realize that merely being inconvenienced by your kids is about the best you can hope for. Welcome to development hell!