See here for previous lists.
Mine.
- That goal Montessori talks about, the ‘grace and courtesy’ one – you need to work on that one a little.
- The mess you make of your room and your computer/art space.
- Convincing you to have a bath. And then convincing you to stay in the bath with your brother, who bites and pinches you for fun, so I can get dinner done. Sometimes, perversely, also convincing you to get out of the bath is difficult, too.
- The Courtney Love melt-downs that you still have from time to time and the way they just take over our whole family when you decline into them.
- The time we arrived at a birthday party and the very first thing said to you was this kid telling you how much the birthday child doesn’t like you. I know this is all part of the fabric of life, I know you could just as easily have been the birthday child in this situation rather than the victim. But it hurt to watch you go through that. It hurt to see how strong you could be with it initially and how it wore you down over the next hour or so until you came to me and all you would say is that you were tired and wanted to go home.
- Worrying about your calcium intake given your aversion to dairy and fish.
- Almost every morning you wake in a foul mood and tell us that you are either too tired or too sick for school. I think we put you to bed too late, either that or you are not a morning person and doesn’t matter that you are only six years old, you should be introduced to coffee.
- On the evenings when your father and I have both been at work and we pick you up from whomever has been looking after you and we bring you home for bed and you drag it out as much as possible so you can have more time with us or just more time in your house.. and at the moment you mostly pretend to be hungry (or at least I think you’re pretending) but because I wasn’t there when you had dinner I don’t know for sure that you got enough to eat so I end up letting you stay up for an extra meal and it is making you very tired and sluggish in the mornings.
- How day-dreamy and irresponsible you are about packing and unpacking your school bag and I am always so stressed out and pressed for time because I am usually trying to get myself ready for work, and my brain feels exhausted with having to keep track of everything I need to do and then track of everything you need to do, too, especially when you don’t do it when you say you just did it, so I have to remember to remind you about everything I have already remembered to remind you about .. and you’ve been going to Montessori since you were a baby!
- The way you just don’t give a fuck about being a grub. How you eat your rice by just throwing spoonfuls of it in the general vicinity of your mouth; you eat at your computer desk/art space and leave rotting food there, even though I have told you that you are not to eat at your desk; the way you wipe your food on your clothes; the way you let sharpen your pencils and let shavings fall over the floor; the way you kick off your PJs and leave them on the floor etc etc.. arrgh. And I try to make you take responsibility for these actions, but I tell you, we go through such pain to get you to clean up anything – it invariably brings on a Courtney Love episode that we all have to pay for and I can only face making you clean up your filth every fifth or sixth time and this makes for such crappy parenting. (And I probably shouldn’t be admitting all these parenting failures out in public).
- That I yell too much at you, that I seem to resort to yelling with you as a first step.
His.
- Constant whining.
- Lying.
- Dissembling.
- No, I don’t believe you have a tummy ache.
- I really don’t feel that it disrespects you as a person to say that.
- No, I don’t think Mum would have a different view to me on that.
- Seriously, do you have to just sit there and watch your toddler brother come up and bite you – couldn’t you reach out one strong arm and stop him yourself. He bites pretty hard, why not just fend him off instead of letting it escalate constantly to something I have to intervene on?
Advertisement
Oh man I loved these- all of them. Yours and his, good and bad. And the grub thing – it just seems to be genetically programmed. One of mine could wear the same clothes all week, she barely gets a scrap on them, and was the same even as a baby. Another practically needs to change clothes after breakfast and her place at the meal table looks like we’ve just let wild wolves in to share our dinner….
Love this, the highlight of my Saturday night. Looks like my grub might not grow out of it like I hoped! Thanks bluemilk
So enjoyed reading this – one of my kids is a certified Filth Wizard too. And is stubborn. And has strong aversions to things. And is sweet and cuddly and adorable but SUCH A NUISANCE so much of the time. And pinches other women’s bottoms. (WHERE? did he learn THAT??! Certainly not from his very-respectful Dad!)
The fact that you admit your flaws in a public space is what makes this such a wonderful place for all parents to come. If more of us shared our moments of parenting that we don’t admire in ourselves (if for no other reason than for someone else to boldly say, I understand that, I do it too.) then perhaps we’d all be better people -and parents- for it.
I love these lists. Both the what we love and what we don’t love, it shows such a depth of love and understanding, not only of your children, but of yourselves as parents and as people.
What Pirra said.
I second what Rhiannon said – Pirra summed it up beautifully
Thank you for these lovely supportive comments.