I love my kids, I just hate parenting
Being a parent is scary, mostly because children are terrifying, and not just in that nightmarish “standing silently next to your bed in the middle of the night” kind of way…
All sorts of crazy, unpredictable, and unbelievable things happen when you have kids in your life. (You know what they say: Parenting is like a box of chocolates, NOT ALL OF THAT IS CHOCOLATE OMG DON’T EAT IT!)
Not all of it makes sense.
Work sucks.
I like my job, I love my boss, but it’s still work. And work sucks! Especially when the alternative to work is a hanging with friends all weekend, or being on vacation, or enjoying retirement, or simply lying on the couch binge-watching TV shows.
But when the alternative is staying home with the kids all day? Work is the great escape.
Last year, my six-year-old had some trouble with bullies on his school bus.
It’s almost insane to say, “bullies” and “six-year-old,” especially in an era when more attention is on the dangers of bullying than ever before, but here we are. And he’ll be taking the same bus in September.
My wife and I doing our best to squash it, which isn’t easy when your kid is too young to emotionally protect himself, too young to understand how to defend himself, too young to understand why it’s even happening. Hell, I’m 40 and I don’t understand why it’s happening!
Sometimes I feel bad for my six-year-old.
Not when he’s throwing a fit or refusing to eat dinner or talking back or throwing a fit or refusing to go to bed or being disrespectful or throwing a fit, but sometimes.
Dude’s had a bit of a rough run lately, what with the arrival of a little brother to not only steal some cuteness thunder but also to wreak havoc on the household without receiving so much as a cross word. Simply because he’s younger.
Toddlers get the benefit of the doubt for their behavior. Six-year-olds don’t.
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.