Parenting is Weird

You really hear a lot about the joys and struggles, the pride and achievement, of parenting, but no one prepares you for how weird it is. It is really weird. Maybe you have put it in you brain in a different category, but I have very happily nestled it into genus weird.  Occasionally I will watch the face of a parent while their children speaks, or just exists, doing their kid thing and I see that look of complete befuddlement, and I say to that parent,

No one tells you how weird parenting is going to be, do they?

and they just shake their head no, because no one EVER warned you. Your kids are going to say the darnedest things, we knew that, there was a whole show, but we didn’t know that it would be a daily occurrence.  No set up necessary. They will tell strangers true stories completely out of context that leave you looking like a completely insane person. They stand on their heads every day for thirty minutes trying to not fall asleep, when all we want is a nap. They will wear 3 layers of clothes, then lie to you about it. For no reason that you will ever understand.

I don’t really have a problem with the fact that parenting is weird. I like weird.  I have intentionally surrounded myself with weird. The problem comes in discerning where the line is between steering them away from the weirdness, and encouraging them to embrace it, and then, am I steering them for my own ease and sanity, or for their own benefit? And is it really so bad to do some things just for my own ease and sanity, every once in a while?

If someone had warned me that parenting was weird I might not have believed them. Even now I hear stories that don’t seem that weird, until I am living a parallel, and then it hits me how bizarre life really is.

Maybe you just can’t be prepared for something this strange.

#parenting #solidarity #toddler #weird