"For the first two years of a child's life, we spend every waking hour trying to get the child to communicate. Then we spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out how we can reverse the process." -Erma Bombeck
Parents have the fantastic job of having a child. Then raising them. Which means feeding, burping, taking care of, getting scratched in the face, performing potty duty, and waking up at 2 AM to soothe the crying child while being frustrated because they don’t know what the baby wants. What parent doesn’t want their child to start talking?
Then the kid reaches the “terrible two’s”. He/she can crawl and walk now, say “no” to nearly everything, and eat a decent array of food. Most of all, they know a basic amount of vocabulary. Unfortunately, if the parents hadn’t supervised their language, the poor innocent kid might be reciting some curse words now and then. Cute, but not good. Regret #1.
Ah, school. It gets more interesting. The child begins to learn more foreign languages, and new information. With no one else to tell their profound discoveries, they unload it in a messy barrage on their parents. “Di’ you know da numba 8 has two circles in it?! COOL!” Regret #2.
And then comes the more dreaded part--puberty and the teenage years. Yes, we understand the mood swings, the different voices, and the modified body parts. But what many parents don’t understand is why their teenagers start getting upset with them for no reason, and refuse to listen. Did puberty plug their ears with something, too?...besides an iPod? Regret #3.
Off to college and beyond. Believe me, I bet parents would be bald by this point after pulling at their hair, wishing their children could just shut up. Luckily, their child finds the special someone. Then they’re whisked away, gone from the house faster than the time it took to spank, feed, house, and raise them. Now the parents wished they had anything at all to talk to…besides to each other. Regr--well, no regrets.
-the clam.
No comments:
Post a Comment