Kids Suck

189

Kids Suck

By

Linda Emma

Copyright ©2012 Linda Emma

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. -Smashwords

To: Michael and Alexandra

Many thanks to all of you who have already come along with me on the KidsSuck journey; it’s been an interesting one.

This book is dedicated to all my readers, current and future. When I first starting blogging about the parental frustrations that could lead someone who loves kids to author such an ill-titled book, I had no idea for whom I would be writing or how well it would be received. I have found remarkable support, mostly from equally stymied parents, but also from the very kids about whom I am writing. In turning the blog into a book, I am placing before you my wry look on raising kids and once again inviting you to join in on the conversation. Because while I sometimes do think that kids suck, I also believe they have a whole lot to offer. They truly are our future and I know that someday they will make us all proud.

Cover artwork created by Jenna A. Mitchell copyright © 2012

ISBN #978-0-615-66081-3

….And like the bears popping up in places they’re not supposed to be, many of the boys I know are taking the most circuitous routes possible to get to God-only-knows where they’re going. I don’t. And I don’t think they do, either….

"…..I used to like roller coasters. Not anymore.

Because the roller coaster on which I’m now stuck is way bumpier than any I experienced as a kid and at the helm is a sleepy-eyed teen, without benefit of technology or any industrial safety standards. Captained by the horrors of hormonal flux and teen angst, this ride is unlike any other.

I’m not sure where and when the curves come, and I can’t see what’s around the next corner. Space Mountain meets Hotel California, where blindness rules and you can check out any time you like, but you can’t get off the damn ride…"

….But I don’t lay the blame solely on their apathetic shoulders. Instead, I think to their age –and ours. Not only do we parents hold a stronger demographic foothold; we strongly hold onto our children. Too strongly, one might suggest. Whether you refer to it as helicopter parenting, or simply overparenting, there is unanimity in agreement that most of us have gone over the top with regard to our presence in our children’s lives. We more than observe and advise; we manipulate and control. And the stranglehold of power we have may be doing an irreparable disservice to our kids….

….And I worry about a success that defines intelligence more for its conformity than its ingenuity, gives credit for good grades over real grasp and understanding. And makes a kid look at September and the start of school, as Michael told me on his first day this year, as the season of the year when he stops learning...

"….Perhaps also then it is the people with no Plan B who possess the perseverance to bring their first choice lives to fruition.

Jump out into the great unknown without a safety net and you damn well better make sure your first choice plan works…."

"….My son’s always colored outside the lines.

Maybe it’s time I step back and look at the forming picture from a different vantage so I can better see the image that’s really only just beginning to take shape…."

"….Instead of allowing myself to be engulfed by the darkness, then, maybe I need to embrace a little night vision. As if I’m stepping in from the blinding white of snow, perhaps all it requires is an adjustment of perspective.

Because the light is there, even if I can’t always see it.

So I’m going to start looking for small flashes of light -from wherever they may come…."

Kids suck.

I’m sorry, but someone should say it. Why not me?

Let me start out by telling you that I didn't always think that kids suck.

In fact, like most of my peers I was fully drawn into the images of children which graced the pages of Parent Magazine. Cute and cuddly little babies, adorable giggling toddlers, pre-schoolers toting brightly colored backpacks.

And then I discovered that all those little guys eventually got big. And worst of all –turned into teenagers.

Added to this shocking revelation was that I seemed to be utterly alone in my newly developing opinion of my offspring. In small town suburbia, I was surrounded by perfect parents, raising perfect children. I must be the only one, I thought.

As it turns out, I'm actually not alone.

Using a blog as an outlet for my frustrations (http://www.kidssuck.net), I soon discovered by increasing traffic to the site and through countless emails, posts and conversations on the street, that I am not the only one who thinks her kids may be trying to kill her. Not by bludgeon or poison, knife or gun; but rather through the idiocy of actions that causes too many near heart attacks and too much heartache.

The posts to my blog and the sections of this book include stories of my family, my students and the kids in my life who I watch on their rambling routes to adulthood. I take a humorous approach when my son nearly gets expelled from school for blowing bubbles in math class. Then, I opine on the specter of those late night phone calls which every parent fears.

The irony of the blog/book title is that, of course, I don’t really think that kids suck. On the contrary, I still get sucked in by their positive actions, by their potential. I still believe they are our future, yada, yada, yada.

Then how can I possibly author such an ill-titled blog? Because 1) my kids and others have pushed me to the brink; they’re that frustrating and 2) because misery loves company. Join me, won’t you?

It’s with that misery-loves-company mantra that I share some stream-of-consciousness rantings in the pages that follow. I think I give voice to what many of you my already know: that parenting is THE most difficult job in the world; that we often feel as if we doing it all wrong, and that no one told us it would be this hard.

Chapters

1. Baby Steps

2. Mother Nature is a Better Mother Than I Am

3. Tall Toddlers*

4. Parental Currency in Current Events

5. Conversations

6. Coach Me

7. Human Touch

8. A Different Drummer

9. Education

10. Building a Resume, Instead of a Person

11. OMG –Unfriend Me

12. Roller Coasters

13. Make a Difference

14. Family Ties

15. Transitions

16. Legacies

*thanks Mary Feltault for your humorous outlook on life and parenting, such an apt moniker for our kids and a chapter title in this book

Baby Steps

911

When I was blessed with the birth of my first child, I felt I was bringing my little girl into a world of promise and wondrous expectation. As a still somewhat idealist adult, I could not have dreamed of a more fitting scenario in which to set a new life

A new president had been elected who vowed to end past divisiveness, save the environment, promote education and reinvigorate a faltering economy. Apartheid was falling and a just released African prisoner was emerging as a true 20th century hero for all races. The Berlin Wall was crumbling and the possibility of a unified Germany lent hope that other inbred hatreds and divides could someday fall away.

Even today, I cannot help but think –what an amazing time it was. Truly, my child would live in interesting times, but in the best interpretation of that quotation.

Promise, potential, belief in a higher hope and passion for the difference even one person could make were an infectious mix of positive ingredients. All was right with the world.

And then 911.

It was the number which I’d taught my toddler. It was the quick dial tool which had saved the life of a dear friend. 911 was good.

Until September 11th. September 11, 2001 changed all that. Changed all of us.

When a friend who was the editor of our local paper asked the community to answer the question –how has your life changed since Sept 11th upon its one-year anniversary, I thought I’d take a pass. But then I thought to all the other questions which that single query spawned.

Reminiscent of what must have occurred as the 1950s were tumultuously supplanted by the 1960s, it seemed the whole world had shattered for us. All that we once believed to be right and true and safe were pulled away as illusions.

After that fateful day, it seemed as if every news report had only horrible stories about horrible people. There were local incidents of kidnappings, rape, abuse, murder. The Boston Archdiocese was embroiled in a sickening scandal of child abuse and cover up that would have cataclysmic reverberations around the world. We were on the brink of war on too many fronts, and it seemed as if the whole world was careening into despair.

September 11th did more than shatter our sense of national security. For many of us, it brought a glaring light to our own vulnerability. And perhaps worse, it took away for many a sense of hope, possibility, innocence, even of the dreams we could offer our children. How could we assure safe haven to our children when many of us no longer felt safe? What could we say to little kids in fear of being abducted from their homes, preyed upon by their church, targeted at their school? That it can’t happen here?

And yet perhaps it is to these children we need to look for hope. The mountains we see as insurmountable lay before them far more ominously than us. It is more their world now, than our own. It is they who will inherit the horrific images, the angst, the bitter list of names engraved in stone at the sites of the crashes. It is more part of the fabric of their lives than ours because they step into this new world order with the heavy burden of changing it all.

I have no easy answers, nor can I offer any simple pathway up the metaphorical mountains our children must now scale. However, a recent incident allows me to believe that it may be they who light our way.

When my five-year-old nephew was taking a walk with his mother, the pair came to a hill. He looked up, with what his mother assumed was trepidation. He stopped. She waited for the entreaty to walk around it, be carried up it, be helped. Instead, he looked at the hill, then to his mom and said, Mom, that looks like a great hill to roll down. Can we?

When Flight 93 crashed into the earth in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on a clear September morning, it is said that the call-to-action was the simple phrase, let’s roll.

At the risk of distorting a hero’s last words, perhaps everyone’s idea of let’s roll is different. Perhaps as disturbing as the world may appear to us, there is still reason to believe. There are different kinds of hills and we all view them with different abilities and passions. Although as a parent and a person, I have had more than few distraught days since September 11, 2001, I am still lucky enough to be often surrounded by giggles and smiles and humming children. As seismically altering as those events were to us adults, I believe the kids are in better shape than their parents.

On a very personal note, my kids know that bad things can happen to really good people. But they also have figured out that they wake up the next morning, anyway. And somehow, they still believe that the adults in their lives will be there to protect them.

They still know—and I do, too—that there is much for which to be happy and grateful.

And there are still some pretty cool hills to roll down.

Let’s roll.

See You at the Beach

There must be a mathematical equation confirming that the velocity of time increases exponentially with age. Why did the years before I turned 16, 18 and 21 crawl? And yet the time watching my son zip from two to ten, my daughter turn from dress-up to makeup, has passed in an eye blink. When did time flies go from being the phrase of my parents to the refrain of my peers? My rational brain knows it could not have been a single moment that began the process. However, I can’t help but wonder if the bearing of children doesn’t somehow set that clock in motion at an unyielding rate. I only know that the minutes seem a bit more swift of late, the moments a bit more precious.

It was one of those frigid Spring afternoons, dreary and raw, when I bumped into an acquaintance. Emblematic of our lives, it was a rushed hello and a dash out the door. But before the goodbye, she said she’d see me at the beach. Only in New England would a thermometer hovering still below 50 prompt the notion of a day at the beach. But the yearning is easy to identify with. In the shadow of our children’s footsteps, we race from sporting event to piano lesson, from pre-arranged play dates to carefully selected club meets. Perpetual motion behind the wheel of an SUV. In such tiny towns, how is it that we spend such an inordinate amount of time in our automobiles? If our winter roads are so harsh, how is it that we manage to move so speedily through the shortest of days?

And the routine only accelerates when the clocks bump forward. Spring sports versus end-of-year school activities and obligations cause universal conflict. The holiday bustle has nothing on overscheduled children coupled with the rising temperatures of Spring Fever. This break-neck pace hurtles on for the too many of us who acquiesce to the race. Continues, that is, until the summer bell. Until we can tear up the weekly scheduling charts, put aside the lists of required reading, and take a moment to join in the collective end-of-year sigh. Take a moment, perhaps, to dip into the frigid Atlantic waves, leave the cell phones and wristwatches on the nightstand and spend a day at the beach.

From my narrow perspective, there is a defining lift of burden with that last bus note, that last spring game. It isn’t just that my own work schedule slows to a trickle or that it seems there’s less to accomplish and more time in which to do it. It’s more a sense of a throttle decelerating, a life planing to a more even keel. And it all harkens back to the day when cloud watching had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the dragons in their billows; when the walk to the post office really wasn’t at all about the bill in my hand.

With the caveats of the adults in my life who warned how quickly they grow, I frequented the museums and parks. There were rambling bike rides with the little girl in back nodding off en route. There were Mommy and Me days for the kindergarten boy. On one trip to the beach, we went off on a tangent and instead took the subway to Faneuil Hall in Boston in search of a rock dove. The commuters must have wondered about that five-year-old kid jumping up and down because he finally could check off pigeon from our competitive bird chart.

Today, that simplicity has been