Parenthood
How do you know when you're ready to be a parent? Are you ever ready to be a parent? Am I ready to be a parent? My children are 15 and 11. If we had more children, I might not make the mistakes I made when my children were younger. But I would probably make different mistakes. My fifteen year old is a boy. He's a tall boy. Some of the girls seem to like him a bit too much. We've had to have "talks". My 11 year old is a girl. We haven't had to have talks yet, but I have let her know that she can start dating when she's old enough to leave the house and live on her own.I tried to explain that as Dad, I'm more protective of my daughter. I'd venture that most dads are.
I know that as much as I'd like to, I'll never be able to raise my kids in the TV fantasy land of Leave It To Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, and My Three Sons. I have desperately tried not to be The Simpsons. And I know that some day I will look back on all of this with a certain amount of satisfaction and maybe even nostalgia. I already kind of miss the days when the kids were little. My son didn't want me to go to work in the morning. My daughter would want only me to lug her . . . well, mostly me.
I miss when my son was learning lots of new words and asked me when we're going to the washcar. I miss having the - Duck Season, Rabbit Season argument with my daughter. I don't quite miss having to read Goodnight Moon 10 times in a row every day for weeks on end until I had it memorized, but I almost miss reading Green Eggs and Ham and substituting the words for Goodnight Moon. That was always good for a laugh. I miss when by daughter had to learn to read because her brother could, so we had to read every book line by line. I would read it, then she would read it. It worked.
I don't miss diapers or diaper rash, or being kept up night after night. I don't miss having to pay a babysitter when my wife and I wanted to go out on a date.
That's enough rambling for now. I'm going to log off, go into the other room and sing a few choruses of "Sunrise, Sunset".
Labels: family
posted by Harry @ 11:04 AM
CHALLAH AKBAR
2 Comments:
By leave the house, I mean, you know, she can make a living, pay her own bills, etc. Originally I told her she couldn't date until she was 30. I think I'm being much more reasonable now. Of course she let me know that she'll date when she wants. She may even color her hair and start wearing make-up one day! What's a father do do?!
She knows I'm kidding . . . sort of.
Yeah, she knows I'm kidding. I will always be protective toward my "little girl" but I will try not to be a nut about it. Having once been a teenager, I still have vague memories of what it was like.
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