When Parenting Simply Sucks

It looks NOTHING like Pinterest. It doesn't even look like 99% of the pictures your friends and family post on Facebook. Not.at.all.

This parenting stuff is stinkin' hard.

Yeah, people mentioned that it had rough moments. They talked about how tired we would be after our babies were born. They discussed how busy it is and how hard the teenage years are. They warned us about bits and pieces.

Yes, we saw the children who threw screaming tantrums in the grocery store, but that would never be our children. We would teach them so much better than that!

We heard about the Terrible Two's... but no one mentioned the Bombtastically Horrendous Three's!

Yes, we heard that dropping our children off for the first day of school was going to make us cry, but the world failed to mention that we'd also cry every time the teacher approached us and said, "So, we had a little incident today..."

We were absolutely informed about the whole lack of sleep with an infant thing. But, dude. No one told us that can continue until they MOVE OUT! We failed to hear that we would be sleep deprived until the little munchkins hit the teenage years and refused to get out of bed every stinking morning. Then the sleep deprivation would renew itself when they failed to walk in the door when it was curfew.

Our friends told us all about breastfeeding and baby led weaning and healthy foods and not too much juice and red dye and choking hazards. But they failed to tell us that our children would hate various foods with a passion and that passion could cause food to fly across the room at an amazing speed.

We heard about how important carseats are... but somehow we missed the flailing and screaming that can happen when one tries to stuff an 18 month old into a carseat.

You know what else they forgot to tell us?

These behaviors are a part of their personality. And their personality is EXACTLY right for whatever is intended for their future. Yes, we get the not-so-joyful job of shaping these little personality traits... but each trait is NEEDED.

"My child is so STUBBORN!" ... Or is he persistent? Because persistent sounds like a good thing.

"My daughter is so BOSSY!" ... Or is she assertive? Hello, Mrs. President.

"My son is so IMPULSIVE!" ... Or is he fearless? We need fearless people in our world.

"*Sigh* She's just so DRAMATIC all the time!" ...Or maybe she's passionate.

Let me repeat the above:

These behaviors are a part of their personality. And their personality is EXACTLY right for whatever is intended for their future.

Parents, that stubborn, picky, anxious child is just who they're supposed to be.

Find the positive side of their personality trait and RUN WITH IT!

You have an amazing child.

And YOU are an amazing parent.