Parental Myths That No Parent Will Tell You About

Here are a few items that every parent, pre-parent or misguided parent should know. Sorry Mom and Dad.

Parents love their children equally
Bottom line, one kid is always going to be better than the others for some unknown, visceral reason. Either because they were the first or have more personality or they are smarter than the others. Parents also seem to like the child that physically resembles them the most. I’m not saying there is a whole lot of difference in the amount of love, but that deep in the back of their minds, parents all ready have their “Sophie’s Choice” choice made up. If you are an only child, congrats. If you are adopted with natural brothers and sisters, you are screwed.

Parents check in to see how their child is sleeping
Parents “check in” on their kids every so often during nap or night time. As an outsider, you may think that it is simply to see if the child is awake. In actuality, it is to see if the kid is dead or not breathing. The relief gained from having a not-dead child is priceless.

Having two kids is twice as hard as having one kid
Sadly that's wrong. Here is the math:
-Having one child is like having one child
-Having two children is like having four children
-Having three kids is like having five kids
-Having four kids is like having two kids.
The complexity going from one kid to two is that you, as a parental team, have shared the responsibility of taking care of one kid. Once you have two, that whole little unwritten sharing contract is out the door. You now must put out four times the effort to manage the two kids. Once you have three kids, the ratio starts to go down. Four kids might as well be none because you can split them into two teams and pit them against each other. If you have five kids, obviously the other wives can help to take care of all the little darlings.

Scientific studies say that sugar actually does not make your child hyper
Wrong. Sugar does make your kid hyper and I don’t care what scientific studies say as I have seen the effects. Not only does it make them hyper during and after consumption, it makes them pre-hyper. If kids know about the existence of candy within a five mile radius, which they do, they will desire it. Because kids only know how to eat and how to crap, that candy will fill 90% of their reality. And their reality will be jumping up and down and screaming. They want it and that’s it. Once you give it to them, they want more. If you deny them, they will kid bitch and kid bitching sucks.

My child is advanced
Every parent believes that their kid is somehow smarter than other kids and they will share this information with you. Wrong. Your child is just as not-smart as the rest. They may be advanced in some area, but that's the only area the parent will focus on that one ability. Kids are only as smart as you let them be. I suggest a daily dose of brow beatings to drop of heavy load of self doubt on your kid. Self doubters work harder and make more money to take care of you later in life. Unless your little Einstein is reading and writing at age three, go sit down. If they are reading and writing at age three, my kid with low self esteem is going to beat them up.

Having kids ruins your sex life
Ok, you’ve got me on this one.

Reason #73 why I’m a bad parent

Greg is in kindergarten and Miss Sally and I went to his parent/teacher conference right before Christmas. We didn’t learn anything that we didn’t already know: he’s a very smart kid and, on occasion, can be a real jerk. Overall was it was a very positive meeting.

Towards the end of the conference, the teacher handed over two sets of missing child identification cards. This is a card that you receive from the contractor that takes the school photos. If your child gets lost, you have a card with the child's photo on it that you can give to the police to help with the search.

In Greg’s case there two sets of photos. When his original class photos were taken, Miss Sally didn’t like the look on Greg’s face and had them shoot re-takes. The teacher gave me both sets of Missing Child cards while we listened to Miss Sally’s explanation of why she didn’t like the frowny look on Greg’s face in the first photo.

Greg frowny :(


Greg happy!

So I interjected, “I think the frowny face works well on the Missing Child cards because your child is probably going to be sad if he is kidnapped and this gives a better representation of what he would look like.”

Both Miss Sally and the teacher stared at me silently for seconds. The teacher broke the silence by gathering all the paperwork together and handing it over with a thanksforcomingin.

For the next conference, I have been directed to not speak.