It could be worse...

I have never prescribed to the "it could be worse" mentality. It doesn't occur to me to tell my children at dinnertime when they refuse to eat that there are children starving in China. Most obviously, because China has long since lost its poster child for hunger status but also because there is no logical connection between these items in my own mind. This is, for me, the ultimate challenge in parenting. The ideas I was raised with never made much sense at the time. The only sense they make now is in their potential ability to make my child stare at me blankly and wonder what in the hell I might be talking about. At least it stops what they are doing. But I have trouble incorporating that into a parenting style. My parenting style consists of endless loops of trial and error, guilt, overcompensating for my own childhood scarring, rinse, repeat...

The lack of logic in parenting is really only reinforced the more I look around at other moms and dads and kids. It's a slippery endeavor to be sure. There is only one thing I feel fairly confident about. That is when someone seems to know THE way or THE answer then I know they are full of misinformation and likely an insecurity more painful than mine. I silently hum yankee doodle in my own head to drown out anything they are saying. I take an extra long shower once home just to ensure none of the residue of their self purported wisdom adheres to any part of me.

Here are some of my favorite parental faux pas:

-when I scream at my children at the top of my lungs, "Do not yell at me! It is disrespectful and unkind. It makes you seem like a complete maniac!" and on my really self aware days I add, "if you aren't sure what I mean please take a video of me right now as a reference."

-the well meaning "dont worry about what others think" while I tell them to pull up their sagging pants, comb their hair, and wear clean underwear. No one is fooled here. Least of all our children.They witness me on weekend mornings wearing 10 year old pj's with holes in the them, hair unkempt, teeth unbrushed for hours. When they ask me if I'm gonna comb my hair I reply, "no one is gonna see me."  In this situation I think parenting needs an infusion of honesty. Something along the lines of "please know that people are watching and judging all the time and so in order to not be picked on please do everything possible to seem normal when in the presence of other humans."


-buying everything they want because you feel guilty or you are maybe thinking they need it. There's no hard, fast rule here. I say buy it if you can just to be sure. Forget the guilt. 

The funny thing about this whole parenting thing is no one knows the answers. No, not you. You really don't. It doesn't matter what you think. You don't.