A couple of weeks ago Conner accused me of being mean. He asked, “Why are you being so mean to me mommy?” My reply was instant. “I’m not being mean, I’m being a parent!” This is almost coming off of a post I read a few days before. Jeremy over at Thirsty Daddy wrote something similar. He noted how sometimes we parents just need to be assholes and damn if he isn’t right! At least we are according to our kids.
I get it all the time from Conner. Well, I shouldn’t say all the time. He is a good kid after all. It’s not like I yell every second of every day. Though there are times… Conner only says this a few times. When I ask him to take a shower. After I ask him to put his dish in the sink. When I tell him to brush his teeth. Tonight it was when I told him to go to bed.
I know other parents can relate to the bedtime drama. Mine starts at 8:30 and doesn’t seem to end until around 10 lately. Every night I send him to bed at a certain time. He knows this but he wants to stay up. He is busy watching Minecraft YouTube videos and/or he has just come up with a new story in his head and he has to – no – HAS TO GET IT OUT OF HIS HEAD. This is actually something that I understand because as a writer, I am constantly coming up with new ideas for my stories. Somehow, they almost always seem to happen when I’m trying to fall asleep.
Because I can relate to this, I end up giving him 10 extra minutes. Then those 10 minutes get extended to 10 more minutes because he has just seen something so hilarious on YouTube that he has to finish watching it. Finally, I give him one more shot to get to his room and lay down. When he argues with me, I yell. And this is what leads to me being mean.
I have to do the parenting thing and send him to bed. I’m not being mean. Just looking out for his well being. I get that his imagination is so big that if he doesn’t play out these stories through imaginative play, he feels like he will burst. HE STILL HAS TO GO TO BED!
Yep, I have then turned into the asshole parent that yells at her 9 year old because he won’t go to bed. Then I turn into the asshole parent who takes his iPad away from him once he is finally laying down because if I don’t, he won’t go to sleep.
By the end of this encounter with the small human I created I am ready for a glass of wine that I must down before I can drift off to sleep because once I lay down, my imagination starts running a muck. I think I’ve created a monster.
Thanks so much for reading!
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