The hardest thing

To those of you who are planning on having children, but do not have any yet, please do not read this post – it is not intended for your eyes.

I think that inside everyone who is currently parenting is the belief that somehow they have it harder than everybody else. This doesn’t have any real substance exactly and how other parents have it really has no bearing on this perception. We all have endured substantial hardships at the hand of our children which we can pull out at the drop of a burp rag.

In fact, bravely telling horror stories of unending sleepless nights and hours of screaming can be a type of parent competition. Mothers like to sit around and sympathize with each other while secretly harboring thoughts like, “Things weren’t really that bad for them; I’m the one who has it hard.” This stands directly in the face of logic and real events sometimes, and yet it still prevails.

Another interesting phenomena about parenting is that as you get older, you forget most of what you knew. Some people may say that grandparents are older and wiser since they have done it all before, but I say that they may be unsafe to leave around grandchildren considering how much they have forgotten!

You know, I think that we parents think that we have it the worst for one major reason: so that we can feel proud of how we’re doing. Think of it, if you’re having the worst parenting day of your life with temper tantrums and broken valuable household items and four-year-olds resaying things that you wish had never slipped out of your mouth, you are very much reassured that you are really doing ok and will survive to another day because “your kids are harder cases than most.” Yes, this strategy makes you feel like superparents!

For instance, many grandparents seem to have forgotten that it is not unusual for babies to cry for no big reason. They all seem to think that it’s because of the wind on their ears, the weather, the kind of blanket they’re under, that they’re hungry or that they just need “more time with grandma, yes you do!” all to the serenade of your screaming baby who just needs to be left alone so they can sleep. I won’t go on.

In fact, I need to go pick up my screaming baby who thinks that she is being mortally attacked by a stuffed 8″ monkey because she left it laying on her face.

That’s not really the case; she is napping. But it has been the case. I have it roughest and I am proud of it. I rest my case!

I hope most of my readers realize this was just a try at prose and doesn’t get mad at me for joshing about important stuff… you know, parenting.