I was always terrified about having kids. I grew up around many young children because my mom babysat a lot of kids. I saw how much work it was and I was determined to avoid that responsibility at all costs. And when I found out that you could actually poop while giving birth? I was definitively out.
Life sometimes finds a way to make you change your mind, and that is ultimately what happened. I met a boy, and he accepted me for who I was. He wanted kids, I did not. He was amazing enough to be okay with that. His acceptance changed my perception of myself. I wanted to give him something that he wanted to show him how much I appreciate and love him. We made a deal, I would bear children for him if he agreed to take complete care of them until they were 5 years old, then I would jump in and do the mom thing. Of course, it didn’t happen that way, I fell in love with the little bugs as soon as I laid eyes on them and I willingly sacrificed my freedom and selfishness to do my best to raise them up to be really good humans.
We have two amazing kids. They are 7 and 10 years old, and they are honestly the light of my life. I appreciate their presence to the point of it hurting sometimes. Other times I could take them or leave them…. It’s just that sometimes I need to regroup for a minute in the bathroom with the door locked, which is very normal by the way. don’t feel ashamed of that.
If you are new to this parenting thing, there is a tidbit of advice that i want to give to you that’s been handed down to me from my own mom. I trust her advice (usually)…. but there was that one time when she said that she wanted my daughter’s first word to be “shit”. True story. “Just for the fun of it” she said. She had this elaborate vision to have my daughter say it in front of other relatives that don’t cuss; then she would accuse that proper relative of teaching a baby to say that word. Actually kind of funny…. (I feel like I need to point out that my daughter’s first word was “balloon”, by the way). Back to mom’s advice. If you’re still here after the “shit” thing, good for you, you have a sense of humor, and I like you.
Her real advice was serious, though, and it has stuck with me this whole time. So, Ill quickly give it to you so you can move on:
“As parents, we must make rules for our children so they can stay within the boundaries of learning life. But they will mess up — over and over and over — choose your battles.” by that, she meant something like this: Let’s say you’ve made a rule: “don’t put your fingers in your mouth”, “chew with your mouth closed”, Or “no shoes on the couch”. You must be prepared to tow the line. and towing the line means repeating this rule one thousand million times….to the infinity power. But then my mom said something that helped immensely in the enforcement of this rule, because believe me… if you’ve spent any time being a parent to a child who “can” theoretically follow commands, you know that they DO NOT follow the rules for shit. you can tell them to stop putting their fingers in their mouth, and literally 30 seconds later, they are putting their fingers in their mouth again. This can lead to failure and madness if you think you have to enforce the rule every single time you see it. Heres what she said that I still effectively use to this day with much success:
“Darling, you need to learn when to turn your head and pretend like you didn’t see that.”
And just like that, I have an ability to switch that light on and off… Now you do too. You’re welcome.
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Previously published on “A Parent Is Born”, a Medium publication.
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Photo credit: MI PHAM on Unsplash
