We’ve all been there. With the parent whose kid can do no wrong. Its friggin’ exhausting.
Its so cumbersome to talk to moms of “do no wrong” children, to tell them that their child perhaps did something wrong. It’s like walking on eggshells. You have to be so tactful and understand the conversation will most likely head into a tit for tat debate on kids behaviors. Before you know it you’ll have had a circular conversation ending where you started only also admitting your child did something wrong first to instigate the other child doing something wrong.
Ya‘ll, I have news for you.
We are all that parent. On some level, one way or another. If you don’t try justifying your kids behavior around other kids to their parents, you do it at home with your spouse after the fact.
There is this weird tribalism where we as parents don’t want to admit our kids may actually be little shhhhhhhT heads. We don’t want to admit that our precious little princess may be a manipulative brat. We certainly don’t want to concede to the fact that our sweet responsible young boy is actually passive aggressively rude to just about everyone when we aren’t around.
Can we all just take a break for a minute? Like can we cut the bull and just acknowledging that all kids are jerks? Even the sweetest of ones? And then can we appreciate when someone calls it like it is?
I hope to one day have the grace and the humility to hear when someone tells me my child has been less then appealing so I can use that as a learning opportunity. I mean truly hear it without feeling the need to defend my child even when they are in the wrong and end up creating this weirdly passive aggressive tense environment where people don’t want to tell me my kid is a jerk. Which by the way is also totally natural to do, we all want to have perfect kids. For some reason we measure our success in our kids behavior which is only partially applicable because despite our best efforts, our kids are their own person, with their own thoughts and feelings. That being said, I hope I can be approachable on this topic because one of two things will happen:
I decide my child is innocent and find a way to shift blame. Resulting in my child still being a jerk for their entire life and people not ever telling me the truth about my kid possibly ruining friendships or stoping them from forming altogether.
I approach the behavior with my kid, however that looks, and they hopefully learn from it and slowly transition to a decent human being.
Y’all, all kids lie, all kids manipulate and all kids push the boundaries. It’s human to try and get out of something when we are backed into a corner and it takes experience, watching others lead by example and continued effort to be honest and accept responsibility for our actions, even our bad ones. I know adults that struggle with this, so why parents assume their kid never fibs to get out of trouble blows my mind. Like don’t tell me your 5 year old said they didn’t do something so they must not have, when the other kids in the room are all saying your kid did do it.
The world has enough jerks in it, I’m not trying to add four more to it.
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