The Fresh Prince was so right.
Parents just don’t understand. New ones, old ones, middles ones and soon-to-be ones. We all don’t get it.
Will Smith once famously rapped about how parents didn’t get their kids. Ironically, now Smith is a parent. Well, I listened to him and hundreds of other spunky artists when I was a kid. And now I’m a parent, too.
Not sure what it would sound like, but the title could stay the same.
The other night, we watched the lovely interaction of my brother-in-law and his wife as they are merely days away from their first child being born. And the hilarious back-and-forth between husband and wife pre-baby is enough to make anyone buckle over with laugh pain, but I couldn’t help but think of how things are about to change for them.
My wife and I tried to dispense some of our ancient wisdom of parenting onto them. Feeling like we helped – cause, hey, we got this thing down, baby – shortly after everyone left, we put our four little, well-raised angels to bed.
And then reality slapped us with something called a check.
Sitting down for the first time all night, within two minutes our five –year old came in to announce the 2-year-old had pooped, only to find he had not, but now the lights were on, the screaming had started and the routine broken.
The red-head ended up in our bed.
Following hours of tossing, turning and crying – and that was just my wife and I – the alarm clock went off and we began our day. Just a few hours later, as my wife went to the Y for a workout (for fitness and sanity), she turned to find little red was asleep, because of course he was.
Sigh.
She turned the van around and went home, because that’s just what you do.
These are the real things that happen as parents of children. Your phone is taken over with random snapshots of the ground or someone’s pant leg, your Netflix account only recommends animated PG movies and your car will become a van. A van, that is, with health hazard codes, unidentified stickiness and something that smells, but can never be located.
The carpet will stain, beds won’t always get made and laundry will become endless, a vast sea of socks, underwear and things you swear they could not have worn for more than 18.5 seconds before changing. Again.
You will come to find yourself shoving every ounce of adulthood into the hour or two between your kids bedtime and yours. R-rated movies, recorded TV, political, religious and intellectual conversations, calendar planning, reading and more are gorged on until you pass out from over-stimulation and exhaustion.
Going to and coming home from vacations is, quite simply, a form of torture that should only be used by dictators from the Middle Ages. It resembles Home Alone, honestly – counting heads, scrambling to pack at the last minute, someone spilling milk all over the food – except you didn’t actually get to sleep in and John Hughes didn’t pen this script.
Going shopping – to either the grocery store or to the mall is an elevated form of that torture. You’ll just want to give up. At any given time, eight hands are shoving things into our cart that don’t remotely belong there. And your five-year-old is bound to say something fantastic, like, “A BRA! Gross!”
Sounds just awesome, right? Well, it is.
We don’t know anything about being parents, but we do know just a little bit more about being parents to our kids than before we started. The only real advice you can get is that it’s your life, your kid and you’ll figure it out all on your own, in your own way. What works for us might not for you – and it certainly isn’t the way your parents did it between 25-35 years ago.
From time to time, you’ll just wish it was a bit more quiet and calm, with fewer injuries to your children and to you. No, seriously: Dads, wear a cup.
Occasionally you will hope you don’t have to read site words, review homework, wash dishes, give baths and laundry. You’ll just long for a little more time with your spouse. Or maybe even by yourself.
Then one day, in the very near future, you’ll get it. As my wife says all the time, they will have their own lives and we’ll have a clean, empty house with nothing but time.
She’s right.
I’m certain at that point we’ll feel out of our element, without the structure of any structure, thrust into a new situation and expected to survive, adjust and carry on.
You know, kind of like we were when we started having kids and lost all of that so-called freedom and beloved individuality.
So today I’m thankful that we laugh a lot, that we stare at them sleeping (in a totally non-creepy way), that we hug them, that we discipline them. I’m thankful for the loud, constant, smiling, annoying, chaotic change. I’m thankful for it, I love it and I’m glad it’s been given to us.
Forget pragmatic, sensible and a life based on logic or fact. There’s really no room for it here, in the ballyhooed “real world.”
And thank goodness for that.
Parents just don’t understand.
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