Damn this Consistency Thing Called Parenting

I knew it would be hard. I knew there would be sleepless nights, bad diapers, crying jags and sickness. I knew that some days I would just want to throw in the towel. That I would flop down on the couch too exhausted to even watch 'The Riches'. But really? I just never knew parenting could be this hard. This exhausting. That the amount of consistency that is needed would be this constant.

Call me a moron right now ladies and gentlemen, but damn toddlerhood is tiring. Parenting is exhausting. The energy factor alone can be daunting but when they get in that Rain Man mode of repeating things with the exact same pitch in each word each and EVERY time they say it (which would be 80 times in a 30-second span) no one told me that you would want to run screaming out the front door.

No one told me that my daughter would say to me, "NO! MOMMA! STAY BYE BYE!" as I re-enter a room. That hurt. She actually tried to push me back into the bathroom and kept telling me to "stay bye-bye". Then shut the door in my face. Sure, I knew there would be meltdowns and she would form her own style of resistance but not every day all day. I sometimes feel like I'm in some government test where I'm in the race of my life and behind some mirror in my house scientists and behaviorists are observing just how far I can be pushed.

She is not only a rambunctious little girl prone to black eyes, cuts and other assorted scrapes but she has a set of vocal chords on her that sometimes make the neighborhood dogs begin to wail. It probably wasn't the best idea to teach her what a dolphin says, I realize that in hindsight. She loves to tell me 'No!' and throw fits when she doesn't get her way. All normal toddler behavior. I suppose I could just let her go too. I could give in and give her what she wants and feed her that third cookie just to keep her quiet. I could buy her the little crap toys she wants just to shut her up when we are at that big beautiful red box of a store and all I want is to look at a set of sheets longer than in drive-by mode. I suppose I could do all that. Yet it makes my blood boil when I hear parents say, "In our house, No, is negotiable." That is madness right there. Madness.

Except then she becomes an adolescent, a teen, and then an ever-more free-loading bratty young adult who wants to move back home. Who expects us to pay for EVERYTHING. One who demands it all for nothing. Who thinks the world owes them when all they did was simply wake up another day and put clothes on that they didn't even earn. Hells NO! I cannot be that type of parent. I can't be a push over parent. I can easily say that I agree with Lindsay and this post of hers.

While sometimes it is harder (who am I kidding?! It is always harder) to be tough and not give in all the time. I would rather be sweating bullets in the grocery store dealing with the death looks of other patrons as my child melts down because I won't let her lob cheese at passersby than give in. Being tough now is way easier than being tough later when your child looks at you with little to no respect.



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