Somedays I’m Amazed How Hard Parenting Is
My kids are good kids. I mean they are all smart, healthy, clever, athletic, and at the same time they can be the biggest pain in my butt that I've ever had. It's true - no one can hurt you like those closest to you. And kids are a constant source of happiness and grief. I love them, and because I love them, they are able to frustrate me like no other human beings on earth.
Case in point: Joseph this morning. He wants to wear his (curly) hair plastered down with a (large) handful of mousse. Why? "Because it looks good." Ask anyone else and it looks like 1970's 'AfroSheen' - constantly wet and when you touch it it's actually brittle. Amazing. But try and tell him that softer and natural looks better and you are the one being unreasonable.
So Liza tries to talk to him, and gets very frustrated in the process. He's always splitting hairs, trying to make it seem like he's the injured party. So she comes back into the bathroom to take a shower, and she's furious with him. I decide that since I'm not yet upset, my chances of staying calm for him are pretty good.
Silly Daddy!
I try to talk to him, and everything is about how his Mom is trying to "control his entire life." Yeah, like I haven't heard that before. So I point out all the freedoms he has, and he responds with "Yeah, but she's trying to control my hair, and after that, it'll be the rest of my life." Paranoid much? So I'm trying to point things out, and I don't realize that there's no talking to a 15 yr. old boy that's convinced his mother is out to control his entire life - starting with the amount of mousse he puts on his hair in the morning.
In about 8 years, I'm going to show him this post, and he's going to apologize to me and his Mother, and then in about another 20 after that, he's going to call us up and thank us for not killing him at the age of 15. For his new 15 yr old son will be saying the same things to him, and he'll be ready to drop him off at the orphanage. It's the same way for every kid. It's called maturity.
I wish he had more of it now, but that, too, is the point, now isn't it? It's my turn to call my Mom and tell her I'm glad she didn't kill me at the age of 15. Of course, this isn't the first time I've called my Mom and thanked her for letting me live... it's just the latest.
So I'm writing this down because some day I'm going to look back on this and laugh. But today is not (yet) that day.