I think in our journey as parents, we often reflect on the kind of parents we wanted to be, or the kind of parents we were when first given the job and compare those first tentative and nervous months to where we are now.
Kelly Ripa once said, “Children are like pancakes. You sort of ruin the first one, then get better at it the second time around.” (My oldest daughter will jokingly sign cards ‘from your first pancake’). Now, I take my job as mom very seriously. As many parents do, I spend a lot of time examining my reactions and motives and coming up with fair and equitable measures of discipline, etc. I recognize that I blow it just about everyday, and I’m not ever going to be the perfect parent I dreamed of being, but I do try.
However, as of last weekend, all of my previous efforts at good, solid parenting, have now been completely discredited. The table manners, the ‘proper words’ the responsibilities, the work ethic and respect that I have instilled….if I had a bank of good parenting credits, I would be completely overdrawn by my horrible lapse in judgment last weekend.
I taught my four year old son how to make armpit farts.
What was I thinking?!! Don’t we spend a tremendous amount of energy teaching our sons NOT do rude things? No, not me! So, last Saturday we had a big housewarming/birthday party at our new home and there were no less then 55 people there, and at least 12 of them were boys under 10 years old. I’m not exaggerating when I say that Dylan greeted every single one of those boys with “look what I can do”, and spent most of the night with his little hand stretching out the collar of his shirt, tucked under his armpit leading a virtual symphony of armpit farters. I lost track of how many mothers I apologized to.
Yesterday, I had a PTO meeting and picked up my amazing friend Jennie so we could ride together. Jennie is the PTO President, a Pediatrician, a mother of five, and your basic über mom. As soon as Jennie and her son got into our car – you guessed it. “Hey, Kennedy! Listen!” rude noise, obnoxious giggle from both boys. Then the dreaded slow motion moment….”My mom taught me how!” I felt the blood drain out of my face and slowly turned to look at Jennie. She was looking straight ahead, totally non-plussed and said casually, “Geez, Lisa. Is he your fourth child or something?”
Yeah. Yeah, he is. Hooray for other mothers with sons and severe cases of M.O.D. Now, if I can just get Dylan to get over the fascination with his new armpit talent…maybe I’ll enter him in a belching contest…
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