Relief

So as many of you on this blog know, I have 3 kids:  Smitty Jr (7), and the WonderTwins (4).  All boys.  Our house (and this is not meant to be a statement about boys-versus-girls, but just a statement of fact) is chaos.  It is loud.  At dinner, all 5 of us attempt at various moments to talk over one another.  They can't even play board games without yelling and squealing.

Much of the time, their energy is joyous.  It fills me with energy.  It makes me laugh.  Their inquisitiveness astounds me and drives me to keep teaching them and showing them.

But sometimes, I lose my shit.  Sometimes that one last word or yelp snaps a little something in my brain.  A "what" suddenly becomes a "WHAT." Some days, I just don't have it in me to be all over them, and instead I retreat into books and blogs.

But that stuff isn't a failure.  It's a good example.  But sometimes, regardless of knowing that, I feel like a half-assed parent.

A good friend sent me this post, and near the end of it I think are what should be the 7 Commandments of Parenthood:

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.

Yeah.  That.  All of that.

So to my fellow parents out there, read this guy's blog post, and feel better about the fact that you are, indeed, a fine parent.