Funny how you wait ages for something to irritate you enough to blog about it and then a whole raft of them come floating past in quick succession…
The latest is the number of parents who bleat on about how unhappy it makes them to have to tell little Archibald off for pinching other children and how they just hate doing it
Guess what – nobody ever said that parenting was going to be easy (if they did they were lying or maybe had borrowed a small child for a couple of hours before handing it back to its parents and running really fast in the opposite direction…) and nobody ever said that you are going to come out of this best buddies with your offspring
Because you know what, you aren’t their friend, you are their parent
And with being a parent comes a whole host of unpleasant things that you just have to man up and do
Nasty nappies – check
Clearing up small child, bed and a small mountain of soft toys in the middle of the night when there has been a vomit explosion – check
Insisting they go to be even when they are certain they aren’t tired – check
Making them do homework rather than watch TV – check
Insisting on table manners, eating up vegetables and not throwing tea at their sister – check
All really unpopular things but all foundation stones of the whole being a parent thing
I don’t enjoy being the bad cop but you know what, my children don’t love me any less because I insist upon them doing things that they don’t always want to – they love me because I’m their mother and hopefully in another 20 years they’ll look back and remember the good stuff (the cooking, the stories, the cuddles, the specially knitted for them on the commuter train hats and gloves, the family times together) and the small battles over bedtime or greens will have faded away. The battles over homework and good manners will have faded and left them with a reasonable education and the ability to exist in polite company and they will hopefully accept that we did an ok job
They are never going to say that we were perfect parents – does anyone ever say that? But hopefully they will accept that we were doing our best and that we made good parents
Friends – well I hope that they find great ones of their own age because I’m not even going to try and be their friend, I’d rather know that, as a parent, I’m always going to be part of their lives, whether they like it or not
Great post and I completely agree. As parents we have a responsibility to teach our children right from wrong. Regardless of the consequences they will thank us for it later. I know I’m grateful for the way I was brought up, despite how hard done by I felt at the time : )
Reading this, I’m thinking of a couple of adults I know whom I pretty sure their parents did no favours by refusing to discipline when they were children. They lack the basic skills they need to survive.
Totally – the big world involves living by some rules and if you can’t being an adult is not going to be fun