Did I Really Just Say That? Crap That Happens When You Have Kids.

Before I had children, there were many phrases I was certain I would never utter.  Most of them are fairly tame.  Such as the “please stop putting dog food in my stand mixer,” and then the obvious next line: “no, that’s not your food, you won’t like the taste,” followed by “no, that’s not a bathtub, don’t sit in the dog’s water dish,” and then “get out of the dog cage, sweetie.”   Obviously, the two dogs that live in our house with me, my husband and our two children play a big role in our everyday lives.

Then we get into the more odd responses to their behavior: “get you finger out of your butt,” “get your head out of the toilet,” “don’t put XYZ in the toilet.”  As you can tell, my kids, little one in particular, like to play in and around the toilet.  “Stop twerking – I mean doing the ‘Pup Pup Boogie’ in the kitchen, I don’t want you to fall on the ceramic tile.”  “No, Oreos are not an appropriate breakfast.”  “Sorry, you can’t watch ‘The Walking Dead’ with us.” “Please don’t wipe your boogers on me.”  “Thanks, but I don’t want the crackers you just spit out of your mouth.” “Cheerios belong in your bowl or your mouth, not your ears.”  “Is that the finger you were just picking your nose with?  Get it out of your mouth!” “Pick out something else for Christmas, you’re not getting a chainsaw.”  “Be careful not to jump on your sister’s head.”  I could go on, but you get the picture.

My husband and I had vastly different upbringings.  I grew up in the same house since I was a year old, a house my parents still own.  My brother and I had several couplets of friends on our block.  We rode bikes without protective gear, envied the kids with power wheels, climbed trees and were literally part of the generation that was told to be inside “when the streetlights go on.”  Pretty mellow and “Leave it to Beaver”-ish.  My husband, on the other hand, terrorized several neighbourhoods, some of them suburban, others more rural.  He was more of a rebel,  especially when he lived in a country setting.  He and his friends found enjoyment in hiding in a pal’s old barn and shooting BB guns at the baseball players in an adjoining field.  I can just imagine them giggling like little idiots as the watched their victims swat at their legs as if invisible mosquitos were out in full-force.  They snuck into corn fields and threw ears of corn at passing cars, enjoyed unsanctioned bonfires that spread quickly to engulf an entire backyard and, as they got “close enough” to driving age, shoved a trunk full of friends into the smallest car they could find to head to the drive-in.  There’s plenty more, I’m sure, but I’ve been told those records are sealed.  As I’m writing this, he’s laughing at his shenanigans and asking that I please apologize publicly to his parents on his behalf.

The point of all this is to show that it’s inevitable our parenting styles would be slightly different. I’m not too intense, but he’s just a bit too lax sometimes.  As I tell my six year old, “no, you can’t drive the truck around the yard,” she runs to him and gets a: “sure, hop in, you can steer.”  I successfully wrangle the Cheetos out of the grips of a motivated two year old at 8 am to come back upstairs from my short workout and find a kid with orange fingers.  I try to follow some kind of guidelines with my child-rearing as he seems to do the whole “fly by the seat of your pants” non-existent parenting style.   Thankfully, he is still able to take control when needed.

Despite our differences, we agree that parenting today has many different challenges than those that our parents faced, which makes the following exchange that I had with my older daughter all the more surprising to me.  Of all the strange things I’ve said to my kids over the last six and a half years, by far the most upsetting phrase I’ve uttered started with the words “back in MY day … ”  Crap!  Seriously, never thought I would say those words, I’m way too cool for that.  It started innocently enough, brushing my daughter’s hair before school.  As usual, we were running late and mid-winter up north means extra prep time, especially since her little sister is very unpredictable with regards to snow pants.  So, I ask her to get her tangle spray and hairbrush ready while I’m dressing her sister.   Of course, I’m ignored for the usual 3-4 requests, so I find the hairbrush in the living room from the previous day but no tangle spray.  We take our argued about positions on and in front of the couch to brush hair.  I go at it and, duh — I get the cries and moans and bratty replies that I’m really hurting her and I’m the worst mom ever (obviously), and so, of course I respond with words that – I promise – hurt me more than it hurt her.  You ready for this one?  So, I say the following: “back in MY day, we didn’t even HAVE tangle spray.  My mom brushed my hair, pulling most of it out, and I LIKED IT!”

What. The. Hell. Just. Happened??  I return from my blackout, realize I had lost about two minutes of time, and my “angel” had lost more than a few knotty hairs.  Her immediate response:  “I don’t care about YOUR day, this is MY day and we DO have tangle spray.” Touché, young butterfly.  This tangle spray you speak of, could it perhaps be the same that I asked you to retrieve 15 minutes ago?

This back and forth was the most upsetting that I’ve ever had with my kids.  My oldest has told me that I’m mean, she’s written on the whiteboard we keep for our grocery list that she “hat”s me. (We had a talk about long A’s after that.)  She has slammed doors in my face, both girls have bitten me on a few occasions, I’ve been pooped and peed on, thrown up on, gotten my hair “done,” had makeup applied, endured tantrums in the school snack aisle of the grocery store, been kicked and punched in every region of my body while asleep.  My privacy has been disrespected in every situation where you would otherwise expect to be left alone.  I’ve gone to school meetings reeking of infant vomit and sweat.  I’ve worked a 12 hour overnight shift on 1.5 hours of sleep.  Yet the most disturbing thing of the past 78 months has been allowing the words “back in MY day” to fall past my pale, chapped lips.

I feel like I crossed a threshold of which there is no returning.  I’m too young for this.  I’m taken back to when I was in school and my dad would tell us that he “walked two miles to and from school each day, uphill both ways, with holes in his boots, in knee deep snow, and HE LIKED IT!”  Is that what I’ve become?  The parent of mythical anecdotes?  In all fairness, I don’t remember tangle spray.  Perhaps that’s why my mom gave me the most hideous haircut in third grade, nice and short, so as to not take any attention away from my way-too-large front teeth that stuck out so far I could not close my mouth properly.  That was a really great year.   Unfortunately, my parents kept all of our school pictures, so there IS, in fact proof that I’m not exaggerating on how unfortunate my physical appearance was.

As hard as I’ve tried to be a cool mom, giving my kids high fives and dancing in the living room with them to “What does the Fox say?,”  introducing them to quality music and not overloading them with kids songs, allowing them to choose how to decorate their rooms and pick out their clothes when appropriate, I guess there is a part of every person that dies a little inside when we have our first child.  It doesn’t always rear its ugly head right away, but, sooner or later, you’re going to reflect back on your own childhood, and inevitably try to convince your kids that things were so much better “when I was a kid.”  I promise you, they will not care.  Save your dignity.