As has been pointed out to me, the love of ones offspring is not an accurate metric of ones success as a parent. A kid loves her daddy if he beats her, molests her, ignores her. Kids just love their daddies — at least while they’re kids. They don’t realize how much they hated him until they grow up.
I have a problem with discipline. That is, I don’t. My volume ratchets up, my cadence becomes rigid and stern. I attempt to manipulate with my voice, knowing it’s impotent. Sometimes I threaten consequences I have no desire to carry out, or back out of my ten-counts to sentencing.
I’m awful at putting the girls to bed. Tonight took an hour. The eldest was full of energy and had no desire to just lie down. What do I do? What can I do? I tried grabbing her (not violently) and laying her beside me in bed. Her younger sister was ready by this time, after a crying jag because, well, we read “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish” or something. Does it really matter? What boils inside these devils? They’re raw emotion, puppeteered by cruel whimsy.
She wouldn’t lay down. I tried threatening a consequence, coolly explaining that when she asks for a playdate or to ride her scooter tomorrow, she needs to recall why I say “No.” So I start my count, and she interrupts saying she wants to explain something, so I say to explain it in bed quietly with me. She can’t do that. She does eventually come over, but doesn’t explain, and then it’s another count later when she won’t be quiet and I desperately want at least her sister to get to sleep so I can deal with just one of them at a time.
She says she’s going to her room (she sleeps with her sister in the younger’s bed), so I acquiesce, and then she starts sobbing in there. Again, I just want to get one of them to sleep. If I can get the younger down, then I can devote attention to whatever’s keeping the older up, but they’ve got to get to sleep because the clock is ticking and their mother is going to be home soon and I’m gonna catch hell if they’re still up.
I get up, try to calm her down, she vocalizes her hatred of me, I go back to her little sister and finally get her to sleep as the sobbing resumes in the other room. While I’m waiting for the littler one to settle into a “lift the arm and drop it” limpness of true sleep, the elder’s shadow appears at the door. She wants to lay down, but she doesn’t.
That’s the beginning of the end, and about five minutes later, she’s asleep.
What should I have done differently? Tell me, parents. Tell me, Doctor Spock and “Raising Your Spirited Child” lady.
Why can’t I do something so simple as putting my kids to bed without having every nerve untwine me to raw frustration?
Oh, and I also don’t enjoy spending time with them. That’s what I’m told. I take it for granted. Damn, I’m some kind of fucking monster.
I love my kids, more than I love anything or anyone. Maybe that isn’t enough, since I don’t love much in this world, including myself. There’s no drug to fix that, and the shocks didn’t do anything. Am I stuck with the prospect of decades of therapy? Can’t I just be normal?
“You are not special.” That’s a tenet of Recovery International, paraphrased. We all have these problems, and ours are not more terrible; we just feel them that way. Really? So, nobody out there experiences any joy in life? That problem seems a little special.
Sorry, folks. I’m just typing tonight. I thought maybe something useful would come out of it. Nobody reads this, anyway. It was supposed to just be an exercise in getting a blog up and keeping my writing muscles, well, saving them from the atrophy they’ve been undergoing. Was I ever a good writer? I at least seemed to enjoy it in high school, knocking off goofy little twist-endings and macabre mood pieces in the wee hours on AppleWorks on my green-screen Laser 128 before setting off on my paper route at 5am. Watching the world premiere of “Like a Prayer” on MTV. Listening to Pink Floyd and REM. Calling up BBS around the country with stolen calling cards. Playing “Wasteland” and “Bard’s Tale” and “Might and Magic.” Writing virtual girls in BASIC that told me they loved me.
And now I’m a bad father. You’ve come a long way, baby.