I Will Not Be Parent Of The Year…

I will not be parent of the year…

So I know we all spent the weekend celebrating the wonderful moms in our lives and they are wonderful, aren’t they? Infallible even? Hmmm….dare I say it? Probably not infallible. To be fair, none of us is the perfect parent we thought we would be. I remember back before we had children and my wife and I would look on with such judgment at all the parenting and safety choices those parents around us would make. “Oh my gosh,” she would say, “Did that mom really just give her daughter some gum…and she is only 4!” (gasp with judgment). “Are you kidding me, is that dad really going to allow that child to talk to him that way?” I gawked. But now the real world has set in and we are doing our best to be working parents who want the absolute best for our children. Sometimes, we have been less than perfect, but we always do our best. Oh, there are some things that are non-negotiables. For example, we committed early on that we would never hit our children (including spanking) and we really never would. We do not belittle or degrade them in any way, but we do let little things slip that we never thought we would.

So let’s come clean, if even for the sake of making the rest of us feel better. What have you done lately that means that you won’t likely be winning the parent of the year award?

I will begin.

• Yesterday, my daughter dropped her plate on the floor and rather than throw the whole thing away, I found myself inspecting each carrot looking for dog hair. When most of it looked clean enough, I put it back in front of her.
• When she was only 6 months old I enjoyed a good laugh at a party letting her suck on the green olives and watching her make a face. It was only later that I realized they were stuffed with jalapeños!
• I let my son take a nap on our bed one day when he was just a baby and about lost it when I heard him hit the floor.
• My 4 year old chews gum…gasp!

Ok, spill it. We can handle it!

b