The Random Parent and the Buttered Dog
The Random Parent and the Buttered Dog
Dear Friends,
I usually write about a specific person, but today I'm going to write about a category of people: Parents.
Choose a random person walking down the street and you'll know whether they are a parent by the look of exhaustion etched on their face. If they have their kids in tow, they may also look exasperated or exhilarated. Whichever way the mood of their offspring swings, their own mood swings the same way and then some.
Growing up, I used to hear the word recalcitrant spoken at me by my parents. That word haunts me today as I struggle to get my kid ready for school and out the door each day. I wonder if every parent secretly hopes that their grandkids will settle the score for them, or if it's just sickos like me who look forward to their kids getting their just desserts.
Becoming a parent is hard. It's one of the most common ways that a person's life enters hard mode. And one of the most cognitively dissonant considering how much joy is derived from helping a kid grow up. Yet, childless people are happier overall than parents. Parents do laundry four times a week, compared to once a week for non-parents. A clean room will last, on average, 17 minutes before succumbing to the random entropy caused by energetic little (or big) kids. Parents say No to their kids about 700 times a month, or about once an hour if we were awake all the time. Which, as it turns out, isn't that far off. The most immediate and stark change in a parent's life is lack of sleep.
One friend whose youngest was in high school told me, "My sleep hasn't been normal in years." I never understood why he was smiling when he said that. Perhaps it was the wry smile of a man crushed by a tiny person he stood no chance against.
Why on earth do we do this to ourselves? Heck if I know. Genes, I guess. I'm not here to give a course on evolutionary biology. I'm also not going to shove some schmaltzy "but it's so worth it when..." message down your throat. That's for you to decide, not me.
I'm here to tell you that when life switches into hard mode, you're hardly alone and you're definitely not the first. Life is supposed to be hard and you're not special. (Do you feel better yet?) About a month ago, I gathered stories from a bunch of random parents about the things their kids had done. Here's a small sample:
Tried to flush books down the toilet
Threw a completed Lego out the upstairs window to see if it would survive impact
Attacked their sibling
Climbed a door; took it off its hinges
Climbed a lamp; broke it
Rode a dog
Buttered a dog
Opened a backseat door of a rental car at highway speed
Called 911 frivolously and didn't admit it until after the police had left
Grabbed a squirrel by the tail
I mean, the list just goes on and on. Those are just the ones I remember. My favorite is how someone's kids decided to smear their dog in butter. They buttered the dog, a chihuahua. I can't personally verify this happened, but it could have happened. Because kids do random shit like this all the time.
My other favorite is my own. When we lived in New York, the city squirrels would brazenly loot the snacks in the parked strollers at the playground. They were no match for my son, who just as brazenly snatched one up by its fluffy, twitching tail. The story ends as quickly as it begins: the rodent freaked out, was let go and bounded away. I can't say I condone picking up squirrels. But I'm also proud that my little bugger showed that little bugger who's boss.
Is there a key to navigating hard mode as a parent? In my opinion, no. You have to recognize that there's more stuff to do while getting less rest. Like building a Lego without instructions, you work with the pieces that you have and put them together in hopes that the whole structure works. A power nap here, a weekly babysitter there, a new system for sticking to a schedule, a cartoon as a reward for homework; you keep the things that work and build up the structure. Hopefully, it doesn't get thrown out the window like the actual Lego above (and no, it did not survive impact.)
Keep Going,
Geoff
Notes
What Becoming a Parent Really Does to Your Happiness
The average parent does laundry 4 times a week
Parents say No 700 times a month
Photo by Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash