I get it. I was not too fond of kids nor did I understand anything about being a parent before I became a parent. If I was at a restaurant and a kid was sitting at the table next to me, I moved. I hated when I read things like "you never know true love until you have a child". And I wanted to execute anyone who put up an ultrasound picture on facebook because for some unknown reason, it personally offended me.
So fast forward a few years. There is an ultrasound picture somewhere on my facebook page, I have never known love like the love I have for Georgia, and I sigh with relief when there is another person with a kid at a restaurant I am patronizing.
The thing about these internet people who hate kids, is that they are always talking about how "parents these days" do not discipline their kids. There is a post that went viral a few days ago about some asshole who bought all the pies at Burger King because (according to him) a kid was screaming that he "wanted a fucking pie" and the mom was on the phone. I am inclined to believe that this story is greatly exaggerated BUT if it is true my first thought was also that this child was special needs.
"But why wasn't the mom doing anything, even if he was special needs? " One would ask, rightly so.
Here is my answer: She is fucking exhausted. It is physically impossible to correct, discipline, or yell at your child 24-7. She was at a goddamn Burger King, not Le Bec Fin or whatever it is now. People are paying 99 cents for a hamburger, and if you need to ignore your kid for a few minutes, in my opinion Burger King is a great place to do it.
I came to this conclusion on Tuesday evening. Before Tuesday, I was in the camp that parents should at least TRY to make some effort to discipline if their child is misbehaving. If they act up in the grocery store-just walk out. If they are screaming and making a mess, put them in their room.I have not had to deal with too much of this, as Georgia is a pretty good kid and temper tantrums are few and far between. Getting ready for school in the morning was always a challenge, but if I don't want to get up and get ready to go to work, I can't expect my kid to want to do the same, so I did have sympathy for her.
Anyway, back to the whole "parenting issue". Now that Georgia is almost 3.5 years old, our expectation of her at dinner is to sit at the table with us and eat three bites of everything on her plate. If she doesn't like what we are having, I make something she likes, but still she needs to eat it. She has always sat at the table with us at least for a few minutes, but when she was 2 I didn't push the issue too much, because she did not really understand the point of sitting at the table and I thought it was stupid to try to correct a child on a concept that is above their head.
So anyway now she is three, dinner is a non stressful event for us (because I never made it one), usually she is good, however she has gotten a little flip during the past few weeks, testing us on all kinds of shit, and Tuesday evening she did not want to eat dinner.
She was laying on the floor, rolling around, kissing the dog, yelling at us "NO DINNER! YOU ARE A MEAN MOM!" And basically being a total jerk.
Here is where I was mentally. I am 11 weeks pregnant. I am nauseous 24-7. I am exhausted 24-7. And I am starving 24-7. I work full time, and when I say that I have not taken a nap the entire first trimester I am not kidding. No naps. No extra rest (well actually on our "vacation" I slept all day but I was so sick the entire time it did not feel like a luxurious nap. It felt like hell) In order to maintain my house and my life I have to push push push, which is fine and when you are pregnant with your second child I think this is what everyone does. But damn. I would love a nap.
Anyway. Dinner. I was fucking tired. Chris was tired. We were both staring at each other hoping the other one would get up a do something. I just wanted to ignore her, and eat my steak because I was starving, and concentrate on not throwing up because I also felt like that was going to happen any second. Georgia is acting like a crazy bat out of hell, yelling at us and basically telling us that we sucked.
99% of my entire being had given up, and I really had to rally in order to say the following words because I knew that after I said them, all hell was going to break loose. I had tears welling up from just thinking about how much I did not feel like dealing with this. Not because I felt bad for yelling at her, but because I just wanted to be left the fuck alone in my first trimester misery.
"You are going in time out."
Screaming ensues, I pick her up and walk upstairs and we go to her room and I put her on her bed. 'Stay in her until you are ready to eat" She starts screaming and crying, I close the door and sit at the steps to make sure she isn't going to jump out a window or something. "THIS IS NOOOOT TIME OUT! THIS IS MY PINK ROOOOM! I DON"T WANT TIME OUT IN MY PINK ROOOOM." So then I feel horrible, because I remembered reading that their rooms should not be where you put them in time out, but like now it was too late to change my mind. God, I suck.
She opens the door and I say sternly, "Get. Back. In. Your. Room." and I sound exactly like my mom and it's all so totally shocking. Georgia goes in her room, but not after first sobbing that I am a mean mommy. Sob. Sob. Sob. now there are hiccups. I feel like a dick. All I want to do is eat my steak in quiet.
After about 15 minutes the dramatic sobbing dies down, and I hear her playing with her toys, and I'm all like "I am so over this." Chris and I go downstairs (he was there too) and sit at the table and start/finish our dinner. Blah.
I hear G come out of her room and walk downstairs. She comes into the kitchen and sits down. "If I have three bites, can I have a popsicle?" I tell her yes, and she starts to eat. I am like ready to jump out of a window at this point. We still have to clean up, walk the dog, give her a bath, play some dumb game with her, read three books and lay with her until she falls asleep, and I feel like there is no end in sight.(this is our nightly routine. It is exactly the same every night. It is like Groundhog's day and is as boring as I am making it sound)
"Mama, I'm sorry I did not eat my dinner." She is like totally seriously looking at me to make sure I still love her or something and I am immediately overcome with guilt because feeling sorry sucks and I don't want her to feel like I am mad at her. Even though, like I guess her punishment worked, but I had such mixed emotions about the whole thing, even though I know what we did was right. HOWEVER. It was so mentally draining. Those without children will not understand how much it sucks to discipline your children, but it really does. It's like fighting with your spouse or significant other 24/7. Does anyone like doing that? No. Do you sometimes just ignore them or tune them out to avoid an argument? Yes. And there is how I came to my conclusion that sometimes parents are just too fucking tired to argue with their kids, and I am totally okay with that because 99% of the time they do deal with them and possibly you are just seeing them the one time they don't have the strength to fight.
So maybe if you do see a kid acting up in a restaurant, grocery store, movie theater, wherever, think of the parents as a person who has the same mental capacity for conflict as you do. Maybe smile at them, or buy them a coffee ( I mean no one would ever really do this, but it sounds like a nice gesture), or think to yourself, "It's okay. I am tired too from all my partying last night! Here is a flower." Or don't do anything at all except think about how awesome it is that you get to go out to dinner with your friends tonight, but please for the love of god stop thinking parents are your mortal enemy. We are sometimes just tired people who are trying to live. You can walk away, move your table, not look..I did all of these things before I had Georgia and they were not hard or invasive! It is very easy to avoid children if you do not like them! Ahem...(One way to avoid them is to not go to Burger King. I'm just sayin.)
Being "parent tired" is EXACTLY the same as "hangover tired" except you did nothing fun the night before. And sometimes we just don't have the strength to do it all, all the time, and would like nothing more than to give our kid a shot of whiskey and let them fall asleep, or leave them in the car screaming for a second while we run in the store,or pop them in the mouth if they are mouthing off...But then some person would call the cops and we would be arrested, so really we just can't win. American society's expectations of parents AND children is pretty stupid and ridiculous and fuck that guy who bought all the pies.
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