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It is with this thought in mind that I’m beginning the It
Gets Better Project – Parent Edition.
I think it was spring when I first noticed the stripe down
the front of the house. “Is that mold,”
I thought. Is something leaking? It just seemed so strange.
Over the course of the summer the stripe got wider and
darker so I decided to take action. A
bottle of “industrial strength house wash” and a quick pressure wash scrubbed the
stripe away. Score one for proactive
homeowners!
By fall the strip was back.
Every time I pulled into the drive way I wondered if ghosts were leaking
ectoplasm onto the house while we slept.
Is this toxic off gassing from the insulation under the siding? Really, it boggled my mind.
When winter arrived I ventured into the mess that is my
son’s room to close and lock the windows for the season. The yellow and brown stain was inside his
window sill as well. One sniff told the
tale. “Justin”, I screamed “have you
been peeing out this window!?”
The 10 steps from his bedroom to the bathroom were,
apparently, too far. And so my clever Neanderthal
opted for the short cut.
There’s the babysitter they locked in the basement and that
time they flushed superman down the toilet.
Remember the time I napped while my toddler napped and he wandered down
the street? Other mothers advised me “sleep when the baby sleeps”. According to child services, that’s child
neglect.
There were times when I honestly wondered if we were
failures as parents. Are we raising
future serial killers? What kind of mind
thinks it’s ok to fart on your brother’s head or run over the babysitter with your
bicycle? I saw the Omen. Is that Damien sleeping in the next room?
And then a little time went by. Peeing out the window (and in the closest and
on anything he could find) gave way to other “exciting” phases. Turns out, kids do ridiculous things all the
time! This should really be a chapter in
“What to expect when you’re expecting.” These
are things I really should have known!
Earlier this week a friend called me nearly in tears. Her [formerly perfect] 8 year old is driving
her up the wall. She knows he wrote on
the sofa with permanent marker, but he refuses to confess. He even wrote a confession letter but signed
his sister’s name. “Ah”, I laughed, and
so it begins. “No, no” she protested,
you couldn’t possibly understand. There
are science experiments growing under his bed and he mines every rule for loop
holes. “You never said I couldn’t climb
out my window” he objects while his mother is ready to scream!
“Ah yes; the knee high legal scholar. We have one of those”. I offered my best advice. “Set the rules, punish consistently and trust
that this phase won’t last forever.” In
short- It Gets Better.
This story originally appeared on The Huffington Post website and in Ricki Lake Magazine.