I seriously dislike feeling as if I’m failing my children in helping them be prepared for the adult world.
My oldest is starting to gauge their ears. For those lucky enough to not know what that is, it is putting large disks or rings in earlobes big enough to fit a quarter or larger. If you’ve seen someone with gauged ear lobes, you might have been tempted to slap a master lock on one; I know I have.
Now, I could be the super ass parent who “puts a foot down”, takes away the gauge set they bought with their allowance that they earned and state “not while under my roof”. That’s the easy way; however, life is complicated.
With the still pending divorce, I’m fearful of making the kids “hate” me, even temporarily in case the judge wants to ask them if I’m a good parent or have a social worker investigate wether I’m a good parent. Sure, I might be over thinking and worrying too much, but that is what I do.
So, I guess I’m a coward, afraid of “laying down the law” and having them hurt me back.
Besides, it hurts with every little “I wish I was at mom’s” comment. They likely make such references without thinking or wanting to be mean; it’s just spontaneous, raw emotion. I can’t blame them for that. They are entitled to their opinions, even if those opinions make me feel even less about myself. Surprise! That’s still possible.
I tried to explain that doing something permanent like punching quarter-sized holes in their ears will change how people perceive and interact with them for the rest of their lives. They claim they know all that and have thought it all through, but can they? They’re 15. Smart, but still only 15. I fear they don’t and can’t understand the adult world because they haven’t even had a job yet.
I feel my warning is all I can do right now. They better not come back to me later asking, “Why didn’t you stop me? I was only 15, and you let me do something so permanent and foolish, why?”
In the big scheme that’s my biggest fear that later in life they will look back and judge me as a poor parent like I viewed my father. I’ve since come to see my father as a hapless idiot who barely had the tools to be an effective adult, let alone a parent. Hmm, maybe we have more in common than I want to admit.
So it’s payback I fear, some kind of karma. Maybe it stems from my guilt for hating, truly hating, like fantasizing his murder hating, my father. Then, after holding on to such unmitigated hate for decades, I realize that there’s no sense in hating a moron who lacks the sense to rub two pennies together. I regret that, not the pun, that’s solid; it’s the hate I regret.
Maybe I can’t avoid my parenting fails either, an inevitability. Guess I should cut myself some slack. I can only work with the faded blueprints, rusty tools and warped 2x4s that I have and make spontaneous judgement calls with what I know. I’m sorry they won’t be lavish mansions on palatial estates. I can only hope the roofs I build don’t leak and the foundation is firm. Everything else is a crapshoot.
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