I've been thinking a lot about parenting, and possibly how I screwed up. It's possible that my kids were not given enough self esteem. Maybe, when they bumped their heads on furniture and cried, I didn't blame their mishap on the furniture that was bumped and say "Bad Desk", but cuddled them and said "oops, that dent will pop out on it's own, or we will use a plunger".
Maybe I made them feel small, by not feeding in to the idea that they were the centre of the universe. "You are not the only pebble on the beach," was a mantra said many times when I grew up, and I believed it. I still suffer the consequences of this, as I haven't made much of my life really. No global impact at least. I believed that there were always better people "out there", and that good things were not handed to you. Things that are given, always have a price. Good or bad, I have passed this down to my kids. Maybe I placed the onus on them to realize and learn from their challenges, and maybe that gave them too much responsibility, too soon. Now they have a mental breakdown if their marks are less than honours, and they spend all their "free time" with their faces buried in books. My children are pale, very pale, and when hit by sunlight they shrivel and dehydrate like little albino raisins.
I fail to grasp the idea of why when a child does a naughty or rude or disrespectful action that it does not become a learning or a disciplined moment. As a parent, I rarely spanked (okay once prior to baby leash, because Tibbles ran into traffic, and once Gibbles had a one hour temper tantrum at a geriatric mall causing the elderly to stare, missing stitches in their knitting and forgetting what they were talking about, which was talking about forgetting what they were talking about), but I did give time outs or "the look". If my kids did butt into conversations, with attention grabbing actions, because my attention was directed elsewhere, I did pipe up and say "wait until I am finished" or absolutely refused to acknowledge them if it was inappropriate or irritating.
It leaves a parent to wonder though, with this new sense of entitlement, does it make the child think that "the ends" is more important than "the means", and that everyone will have a reality television show when they hit a certain age. That if they strive for anything more than mediocraty, that there will be accolades, an audience and possibly a clap track because a bowel movement came out in the shape of an S as Oprah strives for?
There is a huge difference between the toddlers and young kids that I have met, what parents do to instill morals, etiquette and social skills and my parenting skill set. I may have done everything wrong by today's standards.
To be honest, there are few kids I actually "like", mainly because of what they have been taught, and how they function. This does not mean I expect a toddler to automatically know to put a napkin on his or her lap. I just don't feel that I have to put up with kids running amok in stores and bumping into me, pushing or yelling. Goober, boogers and their dirty germ laden breath make me cringe. I don't want to be expected to say "isn't that cute", because, frankly, I don't find it cute. I find it cute when a kid says thank you, please, and acts like a robot. Really all those little bundles are evil, puke-o-matics with pulsating veins in their foreheads.
Do not get me wrong, I am not a hard ass or cantankerous, maybe a little bitter. Maybe, by not giving my children that sense of entitlement, maybe they will not get as far as those that are entitled. My kids understand that bad things happen to good people, that not every cloud has a silver lining, and that skills, unless practiced are worthless. It is a pessimistic, yet real view on life. They see me, who spent 40,000 on OSAP and what have I done to put it into practice? Raise kids, pick up dog poop, throw in laundry and pick up dog poop.
The one thing I did instill was that I have made my children aware that it is okay to question "authority figures", not to just assimilate, but to ask valid questions. This is by no means to irritate the person questioned, but to know that those we view as authority do make mistakes, are not perfect, and do need to be questioned when appropriate.
I suppose now, into my thirties, when everyone else is starting families, that maybe I don't have the patience for the unruly kind of kids or the parents who think that they are the only ones on the face of the earth who have had a child. Parents that feel their offspring are the most fabulous gifts to the planet, just because they emerged out of a vagina at 9:56 pm during a silent birth with candles lit for ambiance. Am I supposed to ignore the fact that their prodigy has a cone head, and that it is ugly, and that I don't believe it scurried out of the birth canal spouting Latin?
Thank God I had my kids when I did, because otherwise I would be childless. Maybe my husband and I did do things backwards and it has been a rough road. Our peers were having a good time when we were buying second hand clothes that took four years for our girls to grow in to. You can always roll that extra three feet of jean material up. That snowsuit is big because air is a good insulator. Maybe the late thirties and early forties sets of parents know something different, and are more comfortable in parenting.
We were dirt poor. We worried about our single friends or couple friends and didn't impose our kids on them, because we knew that they were not "into that scene", or were dangerous . When we had to mingle, we tried our best to get my parents to watch them as we couldn't afford a sitter, or we just did not go out. Now it is commonplace for these little imps to take over social gatherings, and domineer conversations. They are everywhere, toddlers taking over television, uber toddlers that compete against each other for Little Miss Perfect. Toddlers with attitude, Tweens with ego, and parents who have a temper tantrum when they cannot secure a babysitter so they can go to a Stag and Doe. These mini adults also have cell phones and laptops. They are defined in kindergarten by what their parents have bought them. The age of being a kid and playing in a sandbox that has been used by cats is over. Hey Mom, that sand is really squishy.
As young parents, I know that I was vilified by certain single friends, who assumed that because my husband couldn't come out to "play", that it was me stopping him. Au contraire, it was the fact that we were so busy and tired from being young parents, going to school, and working, and with lack of babysitters, that we were unable. I recall one wedding where my husband was so upset, we couldn't budget a rented tuxedo. It was a decision of diapers or dapper. At the rehearsal dinner, they asked us to bring our kids to an outdoor BBQ, to my mortification, our eldest daughter decided it would be fun to remove foliage from the backyard garden and placed on my lap, fern leaves. The stink eye that I received was laser beam quality enough for me, as a mother to really think about what events I should involve them in and what ought to be respected. I do remember taking my eldest aside and saying do not destroy private property, as she was four and was cognitive.
As young parents we were also looked down upon by older parents, how could we possibly know how to raise a child? Well, we are raising two, and although they are a little translucent, and overachieving, they are great kids, and we did it on our own. And really, as parents, we are damned if we do, and damned if we don't. I hope that I don't get old, I hope I leave a relatively good looking corpse, because if this generation of the entitled are running the homes for the aged, I would rather bite that cyanide pill while I am non arthritic. |
