Some mums can honestly put up with the biggest heap of badness from their kids and still think the sun shines out of their petite little peachy arses.
Me? I KNOW my kids are the most annoying kids in the world. I'm not sure if Mr Sun has been anywhere near their titchy arses since the days they were born.
My ears are ringing after an onslaught of screaming today, but at least it's given me the motivation to write a blog post that's been buzzing around my head for ages.
TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT PARENTING
1) The non-stop "Maaaaawwwwmmmm I want this! Give me that!" No matter how many zillions of times I have repeated ad nauseum how we politely ask for something, and be nice to someone, ditto for basic manners such as 'please' and 'thank you', I still get the rudest Divas and Devils screaming at me until my ears bleed every day.
2) Screaming. Did I mention how much my kids scream at me? Is this normal? Perhaps I'm just really sensitive to unpleasant sounds - yes, the sound they use to torture war criminals. It feels like I'm locked in a bizarre social science experiment gone wrong.
3) Bedtime. The frontline of my daily warzone with the kids. The end is in sight - a few hours of no kids, but to acheive this utopian dream I have to go to hell and back. I can just about cope with their whims and whines throughout the day, but come 7 oclock I want them to miraculously disappear and give me my well-deserved downtime. No such luck. They resist, they use their favoured annoy mum technique: screaming and loud aggressive noises, they strip naked and streak through the house, knowing that I have nothing to grab hold of once their slipperly little bodies are unclothed. They bemoan the dark, they bedhop like it's an Olympic sport and then fight with one another until the little one asleep is now awake. Bedtime started at 7pm tonight. My little 3 year old girl has only just given into sleep at 9.30pm. Fun and games.
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| I love it when they finally go to sleep |
4) Threats. The number of threats I used tonight to try to get my aformentioned 3 year old to sleep. No playing with her bestfriend tomorrow. No holiday on Sunday (as if I'm not gong to take her away with me). No ballet class (which I've already paid for). I HATE using threats. Bribes too. After I've said them I feel like crap. I'm not that kind of person. At least I thought I wasn't until I had kids.
5) Anger. Whoah where did that come from?! The explosions from nowhere. Both me and the kids. Crikey blinking moses! It can really catch me off guard. I honestly never shouted in my life before my kids drove me to the brink of my sanity. I hope that once the stresses of the early years dies down, so will the propensity to shout at them in frustration.
6) Patience. Luckily I'm a very patient person, but lately I've been tested to my very extreme. It took half an hour to leave somewhere this evening because my little girl decided to scream in a corner. Bribes and threats came out. Pleading. Distracting. Hugging. Shouting. My whole arsenal of mummy tricks but nothing worked saved for grabbing and carrying and hauling into the car. She screamed for the next hour, oh such joy.
7) Thick skin. To put up with screaming when there is very little you can do to stop it. To put up with 'I hate you' 10 times a day, just because you asked them to put socks on. To spend 3 hours battling them to bed. There is a lot of wasted time in parenting. Don't tell me this is the best years of my life. We have pockets of loveliness, me and my kids, but there are also times when I need to lock myself in my bedroom and take a few deep breaths.
8) Lack of privacy. Forget ever going to the bathroom alone again. If you should so much as attempt to close the door it will be greeted with the door being kicked in and lots more SCREAMING. Privacy and solitude is what I crave most in my life nowadays.
9) Poo. Yes, it's all about poo in those early days. Seasoned blog readers will recall a story I told about chewing a fingernail in the car only to discover it had poo underneath it. The source was never identified. It could have been any one of 3, seeing as my duties as a mum stretch to Bumwiper-in-Chief pretty much all the time, primarily at meal times I'm called to carry out this unpalatable action. The few times I've forgot to wash hands before racing out the car has lead to rather unpleasant after shocks.
10) The non-stop nature of it all. They are basically my 3 full time jobs, keeping me constantly on my feet, even when I was struck with cold earlier this week I never stopped, but the end is in sight. My girl is 4 soon and starting school in September and my youngest is nearly 2. Plus there is prospect of work on the horizon. I may yet escape this relentless madness and find myself writing lovely things about them once I get to see them less.
Addendum: After posting this last night I thought of a few extra things I hate about parenting (isn't that always the case?): Defiance (speaks for itself); picking up everything they throw on the floor; asking them to do something until I'm sick of my own voice and their wilful destruction of our house/toys.
Phew, I think I've got everything off my chest now...
It is most definitely non-stop! I know I shouldn't have laughed at a few of your points but I did!
ReplyDeletei'm not going to tell you what it's like when they get older... There's usually less poo anyway :)
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