This may become a sort of ongoing series, but there are a number of things that I wish someone had told me before I embarked on this journey called parenting.
One is that no one ever told me that your labor pain wasn't over just because the baby was out ... (Moms will understand).
Another is that sometimes,
your little bebes that you've nurtured and cared for and love more than anything in the world ...
are going to hate you.
I mean really hate you.
I mean the "I wish you were dead" kind of hatred (although, hopefully, they won't say that aloud where you can hear it).
They will look like this:
and you will feel like this:
They may only hate you for five minutes (sometimes less). They may hate you for a while and simmer with resentment the entire time that they are grounded for some transgression. But it WILL happen.
It doesn't matter if you're the most understanding, patient, loving parent in the world. Believe me, the first few times it happens, you're going to FEEL like the WORST parent in the world.
Take it from me, you're not.
Why do I bring this up now?
Well, TWO times this week I have been hated by my children. As Not-So-Bebe Girl Autumn walked away after a reprimand, I could hear (under her breath, of course), "I can't wait ...." I finished the statement in my head, "until I'm 18 so I can get OUT of here!"
Bebe Boy James has limited gaming time, as all of my children have had. When his hour was up, of course, he didn't want to stop playing. Being the stern disciplinarian that I am (not really), I said, "No, dude! You have to get off now!" (The reasoning is that I'd LIKE my children to actually INTERACT with the rest of the fam - you don't get that while you're staring at a screen and racing cars/skateboarding/beating up aliens).
As he walked out of the room and through the kitchen, he said (and THIS was NOT under his breath), "I wish I lived in a different family! I don't LIKE this family!!". In my earlier parenting years, I probably would have said, "Well, right now, I don't like you either, buddy!" (SO not the right answer!!!)
Now that I'm a bit more mellow, I've changed my tactics. So what I ACTUALLY said was, "That's OK. We love you anyway". Did that work? Well, not right away, since he repeated what he had already said.
And I repeated what I had said.
And he walked out of the back door to sit on the steps and stew.
After a while, I heard him crying. A little while later, he came in and hugged me and said, "I'm sorry that I was mean to you".
Which just goes to show that sometimes a little parental guilt trip works.
So, now, let me lay a lil' wisdom on ya. I don't claim to know EVERYthing about parenting. Believe me, I've been doing it for 26 years and still have a lot to learn. But one thing I DO know is this:
If your kids never hate you, then you're not doing something right.
I've raised two daughters to adulthood already. Many was the time that they hated me. Other parents were cooler: they did more for their kids, they allowed them to go wherever whenever - the list goes on.
Now that they are grown up, they have both come to me and apologized for what they put me through when they were teenagers. They have also told me how much they appreciated that I gave them the limits that I did and made them earn their stripes a bit, because it's taught them to work hard and they understand that, even now, they can't just do what they want when they want to do it if they're going to consider themselves responsible adults.
So I must have done SOMEthing right.
Rinse and repeat ...
If your kids never hate you, then you're not doing something right.
