257 Father's (Parent’s) Day

When I started thinking about this post, it occurred to me that I planned to post it was shortly before what we call “Father’s Day.”  Since I am a father, I thought that would be a nice topic until I did some quick checking and discovered that I had done a “Father’s Day” post a while back (#151), but I had never done one relating to Mother’s Day.   So, I decided to simply do a post which touched on some aspects of parenting, generally.  While there ARE differences between mothers and fathers (thank goodness), there are both similarities and differences in the nature of their “parenting.”  And in any case, it solved the question of where to focus my thinking about this post.  So, here we go!

​I suspect that most parents have a tendency to remember fondly (probably too fondly) the joys of having small children.  Now, don’t get me wrong, little kids can be a joy, but they can also have their moments.  I think many of us have a picture, or two, of Mom or Dad cuddled up taking a “cute” nap with a little one.  These are probably taken because they help us to forget the times when “cuddling up with the kid” is more like this example from Baby Blues.

Of course, as the kids get a bit older, they begin to learn how to at least try to manipulate their parents by learning (or thinking that they are learning) how to judge parental moods 
in order to take best advantage of propitious moments.  Hence, we find examples such as this, as portrayed by Thatababy.

Of course, we parents are well aware of the fact that we are FAR more subtle and sophisticated than can be accurately portrayed by such simplistic images, but the strange thing is that this sort of approach does seem to work pretty well for our children, at least at some stages of their development.

Still, I should like to point out that the advantage isn’t ALWAYS towards the child.  Perhaps one of the (admittedly few) advantages which parents have over their progeny is the fact that parents have had a longer time to develop the sneakiness which is sometimes necessary in order to survive having children.  One of my favorite examples of this parental advantage (they ARE all too few) comes from Non Sequitur.

The disadvantage of this example, of course, is that Kate (Danae’s blond sister who is sitting next to Dad and observing the entire exchange) has now caught on to the fact that Dad hasn’t really been fooled, hence the trick is unlikely to work again.  Of course, given what I know of Kate, she's not going to give this away!

As children get older, certainly by the time they get to be teenagers, the parent-child relationship gets more complicated., as indicated by the fact that it becomes the subject matter not just of cartoons, but movies, plays, novels and far too much discussion among parents trying to figure out how to deal with kids.  

Some, of course, hope that they can simply establish the rules and be done with it, as in this example from Zits. 

I suspect it would only be fair to point out that such simplistic solutions do, in the long run, rarely seem to work out very well.  One can certainly debate the reasoning for this, but I will state that it does seem to be the case.

This failure leads to the all-too-common sort of situation shown in this Zits strip, especially with teenagers.  The prejudice seems to suggest that the sort of thing pictured is most common with male children, but, as I have been the parent of two females, I can attest to the fact that similar situations have been know to arise even with the female of the species.

I must confess that neither Bonnie nor I ever had to go to QUITE this extent to get a child up for school, but that’s probably a good thing since it was difficult to obtain fireworks in North Carolina where we  lived when our girls were young.  Otherwise, it’s conceivable that we might have had to approach steps this drastic.

The true payback for being a parent, however, is when you observe an experience during which your child begins to have some notion of what being a parent is all about.  I should warn you (if you don’t already know from your own experience) that such opportunities are relatively few and far between, but they DO occur.  This strip from Zits provides a good example based on the child having a pet and trying to deal with it as the “adult.”  No, I’m not really suggesting that one should use the same techniques on both pets and children, but there is something to be said for the similarities.

I should hasten to point out before I bring this to a close that there really are MANY rewards to being a parent.  There are times when one has to stop and collect one’s self in order to remember that there ARE joys in being a parent, which accompany the annoyances.  I think that the easiest way to achieve this understanding is by watching your children grow into responsible adults and establish themselves in their own lives.  I know that sort of thing doesn’t happen in all cases, but, if you are fortunate enough to have it happen to you, it provides you with a sense of satisfaction different from, but perhaps more important than just earning a living or having a “good day” at work.  It’s hard to explain, but I think this strip from Dustin goes a long way towards explaining it.

If you’re a kid, give a parent a hug.  They probably deserve it.  If you’re a parent, tell your kid how proud of them you are.  They probably deserve it, too.

I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with something else to ramble on about.  I wonder what that will bring?

🖖🏼 LLAP,

Dr. B

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”  
                                                                                                  — Nelson Mandela
​“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic; capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”                                                                        ― Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows