ohbloodyhell8

Sadness, heartache, grief, worry, concern, some more sadness, frustration, anger, are all emotions and feelings I have had as a parent.  I worry about my sons everyday and everyday they find new ways to give me attitude.They are experts at that now and deliver it with such finesse they should offer training workshops on it for other kids.  They always seem to know just how to dig in and make my heart weep just a little bit.  The angry “I know, Mom” response is probably my favorite because it’s rife with the conflict they are feeling.  They do know I am right, and they hate it.  They do know that they know better, and they hate that probably more than they hate me being right.  They get so frustrated that they forgot to make the better choice again.

So I pray every morning on the way to work that they will have good experiences at school each day.  They will make the better choice when facing tricky situations.  They will remember that they are 11 and 9 and should be having fun in their childhoods and not take it too seriously.

They don’t call me anymore after school.  They are too big for that.  Which means when I get home around 6:15 we get to have the conflict about homework, again.  I wish I could make them have the realization that they could have their homework done by 4:30 if they choose to, but I can’t.  So that means resistance when I get home since I want it completed and they want to keep riding their razor ripstiks.  Only one of us can win this battle, and it usually is me, and this is a battle to win.  Smaller ones I let go because the adage is true, you have to choose your battles.

Because at the end of the day, when they are asleep in their beds, and you can still see the baby inside the boy, parenting sucks a little more love into your heart, and it sucks a little more breath away as you listen to them breathe.  Parenting sucks a little bit of cynicism out of your system every day as you listen to their conversations, without them knowing because jeez, Mom, you wouldn’t understand, and you hear the optimism coming from their minds and souls.  It sucks a little bit of your learned prejudices and behaviors out of your system as you remember that these are learned aspects of life.  It sucks a little bit of the tiredness you feel after working all week and infuses you with energy to see their smiles when they wake up in the morning, thinking of the important things in life: playing with Legos, riding a skateboard, staring at the clouds, making your cat dance, picking a flavor of ice cream at White Dotte, arguing who is better, Iron Man or Spiderman, and creating magical treasures using only glue, yarn, and popsicle sticks.  These are some of the secrets they don’t tell you about parenting.

That and the amazingly high number of times you will hear the word “poop” in a day.