I am not a Terrible Parent

I read this on a blog posting recently and thought it was too wonderful not to repost.
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There are people who say this to me:

“You should enjoy every moment now! They grow up so fast!”
 
I usually smile and give some sort of guffaw, but inside, I secretly want to hold them under water. Just for a minute or so. Just until they panic a little.

If you have friends with small children — especially if your children are now teenagers or if they’re grown – please vow to me right now that you will never say this to them. Not because it’s not true, but because it really, really doesn’t help.
We know it’s true that they grow up too fast. But feeling like I have to enjoy every moment doesn’t feel like a gift, it feels like one more thing that is impossible to do, and right now, that list is way too long. Not every moment is enjoyable as a parent; it wasn’t for you, and it isn’t for me. You just have obviously forgotten. I can forgive you for that. But if you tell me to enjoy every moment one more time, I will need to break up with you.

If you are a parent of small children, you know that there are moments of spectacular delight, and you can’t believe you get to be around these little people. But let me be the one who says the following things out loud:

You are not a terrible parent if you can’t figure out a way for your children to eat as healthy as your friend’s children do. She’s obviously using a bizarre and probably illegal form of hypnotism.

You are not a terrible parent if you yell at your kids sometimes. You have little dictators living in your house. If someone else talked to you like that, they’d be put in prison.

You are not a terrible parent if you can’t figure out how to calmly give them appropriate consequences in real time for every single act of terrorism that they so creatively devise.

You are not a terrible parent if you’d rather be at work.

You are not a terrible parent if you just can’t wait for them to go to bed.

You are not a terrible parent if the sound of their voices sometimes makes you want to drink and never stop.

You’re not a terrible parent.

You’re an actual parent with limits. You cannot do it all. We all need to admit that one of the casualties specific to our information saturated culture is that we have sky-scraper standards for parenting, where we feel like we’re failing horribly if we feed our children chicken nuggets and we let them watch TV in the morning.
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The last two left me laughing because they hit so close to home. Sometimes (more often than not), I can't wait for my boys to go to sleep! And I jokingly (well sometimes not so jokingly....) tell people that there are days I need a cocktail by noon. The constant, "momma, momma, momma" and the screaming--my kids do that a lot, do yours?--can really grate on my nerves.

I go to various mom's events and many of the other moms are talking about the "all organic" diet their children are on, and how juicing really "energizes" them, and the fact that their kids only get "30 minutes of screen time a day." Sometimes, I just want to say to them, "get real." Can anyone live like that all of the time? Let me just say, I thank the good Lord everyday for Curious George. We definitely watch more than 30 minutes a day. And my energy? It comes from a good 'ole fashioned Dr. Pepper!!