06.22.06
Everybody (and by everybody I mean doctors, magazines, other parents) will say “You can’t compare kids. They all grow and develop at their own pace.” We all know it, right? And we all do it anyway, right? (Oh come on, you do, at least a little bit).
You see a kid throwing a tantrum at the grocery store and think, “Whoa, I’m glad my kid doesn’t do that.”
Sure you do.
But here’s the real deal – more than comparing kids you compare yourself to their parents. You think, “Man, I would have handled that differently than they did.”
Am I psychic, or what?
Isn’t your child’s behavior ultimately a reflection of your skills as a parent? I mean, really. All the stuff you said you’d never say, all the stuff you said you’d never let your kids get away with… and now you’rein the thick of it, and you hear yourself say, in this really annoying tone, ‘”Because I’m the Boss, that’s why,” but sure enough, the kid gets the little bag of M&M’s in the check-out lane anyway, even though you already told her there’s a five pound bag of them at home in the cupboard. But what you think in the grocery check-out line is, “Well, if 79 cents can get her to be quiet for 3 and a half minutes it’ll be money well spent, because all I want is 3 and a half minutes of silence. And hell, if I let her open the bag in the car I can have silence all the way home. Yeah, baby!”
My child is spoiled. I think she might even be a spoiled brat. We’ve definitely been sparing the rod, and I’m afraid it shows.
She is naughty. She wants everything NOW, finds it nearly impossible to share her toys, completely ignores the word “no”… and there’s no way she believes that I’m the boss.
Why I should find this so astonishing is beyond me. None of our dogs ever thought I was the boss, either, current dog included.
So okay, I have a spoiled brat. Now what am I going to do about it?
Well, I’m gonna watch other parents and how they manage their kids, that’s what I’m going to do.
And yet… and yet… that’s not even fair, because my girlfriend has the original zen-like Buddha baby. I mean, I called one day at TEN O’CLOCK in the morning and they were JUST GETTING UP. Man, I’d kill (okay, kill is a little extreme) to ever sleep until ten o’clock in the morning. Heck, by ten I feel like my day’s half over and I’m convinced it must almost be nap time.
My other good friend, well, I can’t even begin to explain what the heck he does, but I’d sure like to figure it out. It’s time to go and his kid doesn’t want to go, and says, “I don’t want to go!” and Daddy doesn’t say a word, just stands there and holds out his hand. The li’l guy sniffles, puts his little hand into Daddy’s big one, and away they go. Damn. I have to pick my jaw up off the floor to say goodbye.
Here’s my kid: “I don’t want to go home!” and she runs away; down the hill, around the house, across the yard, to the glider-swing, where she sits with her face set in an expression of stubborn mutiny.
And because I could stand there holding out my hand until moonrise without effect, here I go - down the hill, around the house, across the yard to the glider. I pick her up and her whole body turns to jelly while I lug her back across the yard, around the house, up the hill and to the car, where I pour her into her car seat. Oh yeah, did I mention through all of it she’s screaming, “But I don’t WANT to go home, Mom.”
And I smile and say to my own mother, “She’d tell you she had a wonderful time, but she’s too tired to be that nice.”
Excuses, excuses.
Truth is I know why she never takes me seriously. It’s because she’s had me in hysterics literally from the day she was born. Her tiny face was all scrunched up and she had a crease on the bridge of her nose just like that guy (the ugly one) who always plays a mafia hit man in the movies. I laughed and nicknamed her “Bruno.”
I’m still laughing. This Little Miss, spoiled or not, rocks my world. And that’s the truth.
There’s no “sometimes” about it.
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